India Bond Or Free

First published September 1926

Printed by C. Subbarayudu at the Vasanta Press,
Adyar, Madras, India

PUBLISHERS' NOTE

THERE is a strikingly singular parallel as to the land-
marks in Dr. Besant's life-long services to India, and
the history of India's political evolution. The booklets
in " The Besant Spirit " series clearly mark these
epochs. The earlier volumes in the series the first
three bring us to the end of the first epoch, during
which period Dr. Besant strove to awaken India from
her slumber, first by resuscitating her age-old spiritual
culture, and by emphasizing and working out in prac-
tice, through the institutions mainly founded by herself,
India's ancient ideals in education. These efforts were
co-extensive with her activities in the field of social
reform, all of which naturally led to the second impor-
tant landmark in the history of an awakened India.
This landmark is the Calcutta session of the Indian
National Congress, 1917, which, under the leadership
of Dr. Besant after a decade of carefully-planned and
effectively carried-out constitutional agitation, formu-
lated the Charter of India's Liberties ; for such indeed
is Dr. Besant's Presidential Address to the Calcutta Con-
gress, reproduced in the fourth volume in this series.

The present volume, in which Dr. Besant continues
in her own magnificent style the story of " How India

10 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

Wrought for Freedom/' brings us to the third landmark
in India's political history, namely the framework of an
Indian Constitution for India, which was read a first
time in the British House of Commons.

The Publishers are grateful to have been permitted
to reprint this book in the present series, for it is
appropriate to the times, and the interrogation, India :
Bond or Free? has received added emphasis and
insistently urges immediate solution at this hour
of the world crisis. Upon its answer depends the
enduring peace of the world.

India : Bond or Free ? has already become a classic
in India's political literature. The Publishers feel
confident that even when the last chapter of India's
struggle for freedom has been written, Dr. Besant's
India : Bond or Free ? will continue to remain a text-
book of Indian politics. Its popular price, in the present
series, should ensure for it a very wide circulation.

THE PUBLISHERS
Adyar,
November 17, 1939.

FOREWORD

THOSE who have read India : Bond or Free ? have
regarded it as one of Dr. Besant's greatest books. It
contains a wealth of material not only for the under-
standing of India's present situation, but no less for
guidance as to the work now to be done to give India
her rightful status in the world. The book having been
out of print for some time, we felt that a cheap re-
production would be a definite contribution towards
wise activity in the present crisis when India's destiny
is being determined.

One of the most important parts of the book deals
with the type of Constitution India needs as the setting
for her freedom, and although some parts of the Bill,
which was given first reading in the House of Com-
mons in 1925, may not be appropriate today, there is
not the slightest doubt that it contains all the vital
principles. These principles in up-to-date form will not
only give back to India the democracy in which she
rejoiced long ago, but will show to the world how
different is real Democracy from the pseudo-democra-
cies at present masquerading as Democracy in most
western lands.

12 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

This Fifth Volume of The Besant Spirit series is of-
fered to the public in a spirit of reverent homage to
one who was the greatest statesman India has known
for a very long period of time.

GEORGE S. ARUNDALE

CONTENTS

PAGE

Publishers' Note 9

Foreword . . . . . . .11

Introduction . . . . . .15

The Indian Village . . . , ' . 50

Education 108

Industries 149

The Awakening of India . . . . . 1 76

Home Rule for India 191

Appendix ..... r . 225
Summary of Bill 238

INTRODUCTION

THE ordinary history of India, as taught in European
and North American schools and colleges, reveals a
very remarkable phenomenon. British Rule is taken
for granted as natural and desirable. In 1914, before
the Great War, in a London Hall, speaking on India's
demand for Self-Government formulated by an
eminent Indian, once a member of the House of
Commons, Dadabhai Naoroji, President of the Indian
National Congress in 1906. as Swaraj. Own-Rule, Self-
Rule I said : " The price of India's loyalty is India's
Freedom." Some nonsense had been uttered to the
effect that India's loyalty to British Rule should be
" unconditional," and this I denied. The Government
of India Act, 1915, justified this position, for it spoke
of laws " on which the allegiance of the subject
depends." Great Britain in her own history, in her
Magna Carta and her Bill of Rights, as well as by her
revolutions in the reigns of Charles I and James II, and
her bargainings with the Prince of Orange and his
consort Mary, before they were crowned rulers of the
land as William and Mary, had clearly laid down and
enforced the doctrine that the loyalty of the subject
and the right rule of the monarch were correlatives.

16 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

In the Indian National Congress held in December,
1918, a resolution was unanimously passed, demanding
that in the reconstruction following the War, India
should be placed on an equality with the Self-
Governing Dominions, and from that time onwards the
ideal of Home Rule has shone like a star in the Indian
firmament, never to set until Home Rule is achieved,
as it will be ere long.

In years previous to 1914, many vigorous attacks on
the misgovernment of India by Great Britain had been
published in England ; one by Dadabhai Naoroji himself,
a powerful assault on Un-British Rule in India ; one by
the well-known Socialist, H. M. Hyndman, Jhe Bank-
ruptcy of India, an unsparing description of the ways
in which, to quote Lord Salisbury's terrible image, the
lancet (of taxation) should be applied to parts not
already "bled white"; one by Keir Hardie, M.P.,
India, basing his plea for India's right to govern her-
self on well-known and undeniable facts ; one, Pros-
perous British India, the ironic title of a powerful
book by William Digby. Many other books of the
same kind had been issued from the press, but they
reached only a limited class of sympathetic readers.

The foundation of the Indian National Congress in
1885, and the great Indians who appealed for justice
to India through it in its annual meetings, enabled
India to become articulate, and her intelligentsia
created there a platform, whence radical reforms

INTRODUCTION 17

could be loudly demanded. At first, they dealt
chiefly with details, with bad laws, cruel injustices,
partial administration favouring foreigners at the

expense of the inhabitants of the country the

countless evils inseparable from foreign rule. In the
second Congress, 1886, Raja Rampal Singh declared
that the Arms Act denying the right of Indians to
carry arms outweighed all the benefits of British Rule,
for it weakened and debased Indian manhood. He
declared passionately :

" We cannot be grateful to it for degrading our
natures, for systematically crushing out all martial
spirit, for converting a race of soldiers and heroes
into a timid flock of quill-driving sheep."

The metaphors may be mixed, but the fervour of the
sentiment is undeniable.

One of the greatest of Indians patriotic, wise, well-

informed, patient, strong Gopala Krishna Gokhale

said :

" A kind of dwarfing or stunting of the Indian
race is going on under the present system. We
must live all our life in an atmosphere of inferiority,
and the tallest of us must bend, in order that the
exigencies of the system may be satisfied. The
upward impulse, if I may use such an expression,
which every schoolboy at Eton or Harrow may feel,
that he may one day be a Gladstone, a Nelson, or a
Wellington, and which may draw forth the best
efforts of which he is capable, that is denied to us.
The height to which our manhood is capable of
2

18 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

rising can never be reached by us under the present
system. The moral elevation which every Self-
Governing people feel, cannot be felt by us. Our
administrative and military talents must gradually
disappear owing to sheer disuse, till at last our lot,
as hewers of wood and drawers of water in our own
country, is stereotyped."

The higher the character and quality of the man,
the deeper, the more keen, is the passion of resent-
ment felt. I shall never forget the sudden indignation
which flamed up in Mr. Gokhale, when a highly placed
English official said to him : " Mr. Gokhale, why do
you not come among us?" The answer rang out
sharply : " We will never come among you until we
can come as equals."

This stunting of the race begins with the education
of the boy, and continues until he leaves his Univer-
sity. I have known set as a subject for an essay by
Indian boys, "The blessings of British Rule." Imagine
if, in a public school in England, there were set as a
subject for an essay, " The advantages of establishing
German Rule in England." Imagine if a young German
professor were brought over to England to supersede
an experienced English professor in the teaching of
English history. I propose to prove in this little book
that England found India an educated Nation and has
reduced her masses to illiteracy ; that England found
the Indian people free, prosperous and rich, and has
reduced her to terrible poverty. I willingly admit

INTRODUCTION 19

that in the machinery by which she governs, England
is very efficient ; but she is inefficient in the vital
matters on which the welfare of a Nation depends.
She is good in railways, posts, secretarial work,
but has undermined the virility of Indians, humiliated
them in the face of the world, made India into a sub-
ject Nation, imposed on her the " intolerable degrada-
tion of a foreign yoke " (Mr. Asquith at the beginning
of the Great War). These are crimes for which no
number of well-managed railways can make amends.
Better bullock carts and Freedom than a train de luxe
with subjection. Even had she given prosperity instead
of ghastly poverty, the crime would still be in the
destruction of her self-respect, the cramping of her
initiative, the stain upon her National honour. Mazzini
rightly said : " God has written a line of His thought
over the cradle of every people That is its
special mission. It cannot be cancelled , it must
be freely developed." India cannot perform her
mission to the world while she is a subject Nation
The world is the poorer by the silence imposed
on her.

If some Indians do not feel this, it is because they
have been educated in schools and colleges subject to
a foreign Government, and live in the atmosphere of
inferiority whereof Gokhale spoke. That they can live
without feeling it, without chafing against it, is the final
proof of their denationalization.

20 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

Few educated Indians, however, save those who
deliberately put their own advantage above their
country's good, are now denationalized to such an
extent, and in the awakening of India the Societies for
religious reform, the Brahmo Samaj, the Arya Samaj,
The Theosophical Society (the Founders of which landed
in Bombay on February 16, 1879) have taken a lead-
ing part. The last-named Society, as an organization,
has not entered the political field, though it has con-
tributed many strong fighters to it ; but it restored to
India pride in her glorious Past ; it rescued the country
from the materialism which was striking at the heart
of India, by reviving the ancient religions which were
slowly perishing through the education given in the
Government and missionary schools and colleges ; the
Government ignored religion, and gave an education
purely secular ; the missionaries attacked the Indian
religions, and taught Christianity ; by this policy they
merely spread materialism, for the lads and young men
had no inclination to embrace a new religion, after
hearing their own faiths condemned or mocked.

Invasions of foreigners, before the coming of the
apparently harmless English traders, chartered as the
East India Company, had mostly been followed by
their settling down in the country and becoming Indians,
or by their retirement from it when peace returned.
Such invasions as that of Semiramis of Nineveh irv
2034 B.C. ; of Rameses II of Egypt in 981 B.C. ; of

INTRODUCTION 21

Darius of Persia in the sixth century B.C. ; of Alexander
of Greece in 327 B.C. ; these all returned home
again, leaving some traces behind them, such as a
temporary tribute, after that of Darius, of gold-dust
(worth a million pounds sterling) from Sindh and north-
western Panjab ; or as the impress of Greek Art on
sculptures and carvings in the north. India's relations
with foreign countries were mostly those of peaceful
trade and commerce, as with Babylon the Great in
3000 B.C. ; as with Egypt, where mummies dating from
2000 B.C. have been found swathed in finest Indian
muslin ; Hiram of Tyre traded with her 980 B.C., as is
shown by the Tamil names, found in the Hebrew Scrip-
tures, of peacocks, spice and other articles. A large
and lucrative trade was carried on with Rome, whither
embassies were also sent, both before and after the
beginning of the Christian Era ; the ladies of Rome's
Imperial Courts delighted to deck themselves in Indian
silks. Pliny complains of the quantity of gold which
was poured into India in many ways, while none
returned from it ; and this same phenomenon was
chronicled by the French observer Bernier, only three
centuries ago ; the same is true of the intervening
centuries, for whenever foreign travellers touch her,
they record similar stories of her wealth, and of the
happiness and freedom of her agricultural workers and
of her craftsmen. We may just glance at two in-
stances, from records left by two Chinese travellers.

22 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

Fa-Hien visited India in the fifth century A.D., and
surmounted many perils on his way thither. But when
he reached India where he lived for six years he
found the roads were safe, and robbers did not molest
him ; in the villages, he said, people went and came as
they chose ; capital punishment and torture were un-
known ; but repeated rebellion was penalised by
cutting off the right hand. In the seventh century
A.D., Hiouen-Tsang visited India and was present at a
quinquennial festival held at Prayag (now Allahabad),
lasting for seventy-five days, and at which five lakhs of
people (500,000) were present. At this festival King
Harsha distributed the unspent wealth accumulated
during the preceding fve years, keeping intact his
military equipment, weapons, horses, etc. A list of
the classes receiving gifts is given, but one day may
suffice us. The recipients were ten thousand Buddhist
monks, and each one received 100 pieces of gold,
one pearl, and one cloth.

Agriculture was prosperous, the soil occasionally
yielding three crops in a year, and two crops are
mentioned as general. The villages were practically
self-contained, as we shall see in dealing with them
presently, and the continuous wealth of India was
created in her villages, and fed her export trade. Be-
fore Christ, Megasthenes, a Greek ambassador, gave a
glowing account of the Indian civilization, its pros-
perous villages, the high character of its inhabitants.

INTRODUCTION 23

Twenty-three centuries afterwards, Sir Thomas Munro,
before a Committee of the British Houses of Parlia-
ment in March and April, 1813, was asked whether he
thought that the civilization of the Hindus would be
promoted by its contact with British trade, and he
gave the following remarkable answer :

"I do not exactly understand what is meant by
the 'civilization of the Hindus.' In the higher
branches of science, in the knowledge of the theory
and practice of good government, and in an educa-
tion which by banishing prejudice and superstition
opens the mind to receive instruction of every
kind from every quarter, they are much inferior
to Europeans. But if a good system of agriculture,
unrivalled manufacturing skill, a capacity to produce
whatever can contribute to either convenience or
luxury, schools established in every village for teach-
ing reading, writing and arithmetic, the general
practice of hospitality and charity amongst each
other, and, above all, a treatment of the female sex
full of confidence, respect and delicacy, are among
the signs which denote a civilized people then the
Hindus are not inferior to the nations of Europe ;
and if civilization is to become an article of trade
between the two countries, I am convinced that this
country will gain by the import cargo."

This passing notice of village education throws light
on the statement of the Ramayana (Balakandam V)
that in the kingdom of King Dasharatha there was
none who could not read and write ; it also says that
each was " contented with his possessions," for there
were no poor. The admirable arrangements of the

24 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

Village Communities were responsible for this aeonian
prosperity ; Vincent Smith speaks of highly civilized
communities which had existed for untold centuries,
and mentions sixteen kingdoms between the Himalayas
and the Nerbudda river in the seventh century B.C.
The important group of literature called Puranas
(ancient) throws brilliant light on the customs and lives
of the ancient Aryan people, and before they came
down into India, there existed there the highly devel-
oped Dravidian civilization in the north-west, north
and north-east of India, and in the south, with which
they more or less fraternized, after fighting their way
thither. The Aryans brought with them their religion,
Hinduism, which, after a while, dominated India.

The Pars? Community was originally formed out of
refugees from Persia, seeking an asylum from Muham-
madan persecution, and they form a small, but valu-
able, part of the Indian Nation.

The Muhammadans carved out their right to citizen-
ship in India by the sword ; the first invasion was in
the eighth century by Arabs, who conquered Sindh,
but found a barrier in Rajputana that they could not
cross. In the tenth century (A.D. 986) came the
Sultan of Ghazni, who established himself in Peshawar,
and his son won Lahore in 1021. Prithviraj, slain,
closed the Hindu Empire of Delhi, in 1193, that had
lasted since the Great War, B.C. 3000, related in the
Mahabharata. Delhi then became the capital of the

INTRODUCTION 25

Pathan Empire, which endured till 1526 ; then came,
with the same city as capital, the Mughal Empire,
which perished, after more than 300 years, in the
Sepoy Rebellion against the British in 1857.

Looking back over the millennia during which the
above-mentioned invasions and tradings took place,
we note that as to Babylon, Nineveh, Egypt, Persia,
Greece, Rome, their Empires have passed away, and
only in their ruins and in their tombs can something
be found telling of their ancient splendour ; but India,
their comtemporary and equal in those days of their
greatness, India still lives, and still there stretches
before her a Future yet to be written, a Future which,
thus whispers Hope, shall be yet more glorious than
her Past

No country, perhaps, needs more than India that
very modern method, at once a Science and an Art,
that is called " Political Science." Professor Seeley,
in his lectures on this subject, struck a new note in
the study of History. As he said :

" This Science is not a thing distinct from History,
but inseparable from it. To call it a part of History
might do some violence to the usage of language,
but I may venture to say that History without Politi-
cal Science is a study incomplete, truncated, as on
the other hand Political Science without History is
hollow and baseless or in one word :

History without Political Science has no fruit ;
Political Science without History has no root."

26 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

Professor Sidgwick, writing a Preface to the published
lectures, remarks :

" As regards the general view that these lectures
enforce and illustrate- the two-sided doctrine (1)
that the right method of studying Political Science
is an essentially historical method, and (2) that the
right method of studying Political History is to study
it as material for Political Science I think it may be
said that this was one of his deepest and most
permanent convictions "

Professor Sidgwick rightly points out in his Preface,
that " in order to know what England ought to be and
do now, they must study what she has been and done
in the past." This is pre-eminently true of India, and
this is a truth which Britain has never realized in her
dealings with India ; and because she has never real-
ized it, she is draining away all India's true life, and
is reducing her to a fifth-rate copy of herself. Emer-
son, with his keen insight, says of the Englishman,
that he

" sticks to his own traditions and usages, and, so
help him God ' he will force his Island bye-laws
down the throat of great countries like India, China,
Canada, Australia."

This is fatally true, and explains the superficial suc-
cess and the deep failure of Britain's Government of
India. As another American, ex-President Woodrow
Wilson, in his valuable work, The State, says :

" Each People, each Nation, must live upon the
lines of its own experience. Nations are no more

INTRODUCTION 27

capable of borrowing experience than individuals
are. The histories of other peoples may furnish us
with light, but they cannot furnish us with conditions
of action. Every Nation must constantly keep in
touch with its Past."

That is the real reason why no foreign Government
can be a success over a civilized Nation, nor can it
ever be really stable. The two have no common
Past. Their roots are struck in different soils ; they
look at everything from different angles ; and
the best intentions are constantly misunderstood.
Wrong motives are supplied ; distorted vision deludes.
Success is only possible when the invader settles down
permanently in a conquered land, so that after a long
period of friction, the two have created a common
Past, and the stranger is assimilated and become a
National. He must forget that his ancestors were for-
eigners and remember only his recent Past. The Nor-
mans thus became Britons. " Saxon and Norman and
Dane are we ! " sang the poet Tennyson, but their
common Past is long enough to make them into one
Nation.

Britons are good, though often brutal, Colonists
where they come into relations with entirely uncivilized
tribes, whose Past is so remote as to be forgotten.
But they trample with their heavy boots over the
sensitive, delicate susceptibilities of an ancient, highly
civilized and cultured Nation, such as India. The

28 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

destruction of India's Village System was the greatest
of England's blunders. She has lately tried to create a
Local Government in the place of the one she de-
stroyed, but a Local Government on her own lines, an
exotic, instead of one on Indian lines ; and it has been
a tragic failure, except in Bengal, where greater liberty
was permitted.

The Decentralization Commission, appointed in a
flash of intuition in 1907, fortunately containing one
Indian, Romesh Chandra Dutt the author of CiV//i-
.zat/on in Ancient India remarked :

" Throughout the greater part of India the
Village constitutes the primary territorial unit of
Government organization, and from the villages
are built up larger administrative entities. . . .
(These Villages) formerly possessed a large degree
of local autonomy. This autonomy has now dis-
appeared, owing to the establishment of local
Civil and Criminal Courts, the present Revenue
and Police organization, the increase of com-
munication, the growth of individualism, and the
operation of the individual raiyatwari system, which
is extending even in the North of India. Neverthe-
less, the Village still remains the first unit of adminis-
tration ; the principal Village functionaries the
headman, the accountant and the Village watchman
are largely utilised and paid by Government, and
there is still a certain amount of common Village
feeling and interests."

Written by an Englishman evidently, unconscious
that the words " paid by Government " mark the gulf

INTRODUCTION 29

between the English and Indian Village systems. These
officials keep the old names, but the old Panchayat
(Council of Five) was elected by the householders of
the village and was responsible to them ; now the
officers are responsible to Government officials, and
their interest lies in pleasing these, not in satisfying their
electors, as of old.

The Report advised the establishment of Village
Panchayats, Sub-District and District Boards, but all these
were to be kept " completely under the eye and hand
of the District authorities." That spelt their failure.

I commented on this in the stirring days of the first
Home Rule agitation :

" It is admitted that the Village communities
have disintegrated under British administration, but
the Report urges their re-establishment. It seems
that some witness doubted ' whether the people are
sufficiently advanced in education and independence
for any measure of village autonomy ' ; there speaks
the spirit of the bureaucrat. The Villages had been
autonomous for thousands of years ; invasions,
changes of rule, lapse of time, had left them active ;
a century and a half of British Rule had made them
unfit, in this witness's mind, to manage their own
affairs. Why this strange deterioration under a
Rule supposed to be uplifting ? Because, on the
Procrustes-bed of Bureaucracy all that did not fit
it had to be chopped off ; the villages had their
own ways, which had served them well, but they
were not the Collector's ways, so they were bad.
Only Home Rule will re-integrate Village Govern-
ment."

30 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

Swami Vivekananda, whose eloquent voice rang
through the United States of America in the nineties
of the last century, knew the value of India's Past to
Jndia's Future. Me said to India :

" Children of India, I am here to speak to you
today about some practical things, and my object
in reminding you about the glories of the Past is
simply this. Many times have I been told that
looking into the Past only degenerates and leads to
nothing, and that we should look to the future.
That is true. But out of the Past is built the Future,
look back, therefore, as far as you can ; drink deep
of the eternal fountains that are behind, and after
that, look forward, march forward, and make India
brighter, greater, much higher than she ever was.
Our ancestors were great. We must recall that.
We must learn the elements of our being, the blood
that courses in our veins, we must have faith in that
blood, and what it did in the Past ; and out of that
faith, and consciousness of past greatness, we must
build an India yet greater than what she has been."

Swami Vivekananda was right.

An accurate knowledge of the Past of a country
is necessary for everyone who would understand its
Present, and who desires to judge of its Future.
The most ancient Past of India cannot be traced in any
available history, because those who now are known
as the Aryan Hindus of India, or the Indo-Aryans, only
came down from Central Asia into Bharatavarsha,
otherwise called Aryavarta " The land of the Sons of
Bharata," or " The land of the Aryans," " the noble

INTRODUCTION 31

people " at the time of the sinking of Poseidonis,
nine millennia before the Christian Era. Ages before,
this Mother-Race of the Aryans had dwelt in Central
Asia, and it was there that it developed its national
characteristics, and sent out four daughter sub-races
westward, ere the Mother-Race itself travelled south-
wards into India.

Sir William Hunter has described Central Asia as the
Home of the Aryans, and has stated how these bands
of emigrants went out in successive great expeditions.

They had first, it may be well to mention, come
eastwards from the immense Continent of Atlantis,
where they had occupied a small portion of the great
tract where now the Atlantic Ocean rolls Of this
early exodus "history" has no knowledge, though
in that exquisite gem of Chinese literature, entitled
The Classic of Purity, we are told it was brought from
" the City of the Golden Gate," which was the capital
of one of the kingdoms of Atlantis. It is possible
that archaeological research which has so wonder-
fully reconstructed for us by its excavations many of
the histories which were regarded not long ago as
myths and legends may yet throw light on those
far-off journeyings which brought our forefathers, not
yet evolved into Aryans, across what is now the
African Sahara, across Egypt, into Arabia, where they
long remained ; and then some families travelled
northwards through Mesopotamia, and onwards to

32 INDIA : BOND OR FREE ?

the northern area of Central Asia ; there they settled
for awhile, undergoing many hardships, attacked by
the wild tribes surrounding their colony, massacred
down to a few survivors more than once, until the
type became fixed, and they finally settled down round
that White Island, of which mention is made in Hindu
literature, and founded round it a mighty city.

Sir William Hunter is, of course, not responsible for
the statements in the last paragraph ; these are con-
densed from clairvoyant investigations ; but here again
archaeology is now at work, and many relics of pre-
historical arts and crafts have been unearthed in
Mesopotamia, and, much to the puzzlement of archaeol-
ogists, other resurrected articles, closely resembling
these, have been discovered in the northwest of India,
in Sindh and the Panjab, linking up the widely separat-
ed lands. And an American expedition has now partly
uncovered some remains of a huge city, which will, the
excavators say, take years to examine. It will be
interesting if they have discovered and will presently
unbury the "City of the Bridge," described many
years ago by patient clairvoyant researches. It was
from this city that families were directed into four
large and fertile valleys running between the surround-
ing hills wherein they lived and multiplied through
many generations, developing the special qualities
which characterise the four great daughter-races, or
sub-races, of the Mother-Race, the centre of which

INTRODUCTION 33

remained the White Island with its guardian City, the
City of the Bridge. We are not concerned here with
its doings, tilt it is bidden to go southwards, beyond
the mighty range of the Himalayas, to find its new
home in India, whither we follow it, though we must
perforce pass over the stories of the successive waves
that rolled southwards, conquered, colonized, settled
down in the huge peninsula known to the modern
world as India. " That is another story," and is told
elsewhere.

To return to what is, at present, generally regarded
as the more solid ground on which stood Sir William
Hunter, we learn from him that the early emigrants
from Central Asia settled along the southern borders
of the Mediterranean , another emigration founded
what became the great ancient Empire of Persia ; a
modern Parsi writer claims for this an antiquity of
30,000 years B.C. A third emigration travelled still
further westwards, and gave birth to the Nations
which dwelt on the northern borders of the Mediter-
ranean the Greeks, Italians, Spanish and spread
northwards, becoming French, Irish and early British ;
the name of Kelts, under which all these Nations were
grouped with highly developed emotions, artistic,
lovers of beauty has fallen out of modern anthro-
pology, but is a very convenient title. A fourth
emigration travelled to northern Europe, as it became
habitable, and were the ancestors of the Slav, Teutonic
3

34 INDIA : BOND OR FREE ?

and Scandinavian peoples. Sir Henry Maine points
out how these brought with them from their Asian
cradle-land the Village System which still existed in
India as late as the nineteenth century. In 1816, the
East India Company, which had already drained India
of much of her wealth and reduced her to a misery
unknown to her during the ages of her immemorial
Past, gave the last blow to her degradation by destroy-
ing her Village System, thereby depriving her of
Education Sir Thomas Munro said, as we have seen,
in his evidence before the House of Commons in
1813, that there was " a school in every village," as
was natural since every village had its Temple and
every Temple its school ; the Musalman Mosque had
likewise its school attached to it thus, with the
Education stifling, only for a time, please God, that
" ineradicable love of liberty" which was the child of
the free institutions of the Village. It will be remem-
bered that De Toqueville, studying Democracy as
developed in the United States of America, laid stress
on the fact that the strength of the then Colonies in their
struggle for Freedom lay in their " Townships " ; he
gave to these " the credit for training their citizens in
the habit of Self-Government and regarded the exist-
ence of these as a guarantee for the safety of their
Freedom when it was won." Those self-ruling Town-
ships were the schools of Democracy, and it is worth
while to observe that from the earliest contacts of

INTRODUCTION 35

India with the West, foreign travellers always found
her a country of self-ruled villages, " little republics/'
as they were called. Manu, the most ancient of
Indian law-givers, living in a remote antiquity, laid
down the Village as the first Unit of Government. His
ascending stages of larger Units increased by successive
multiples in tens 10 villages, 100 villages, 1,000
villages and each had its own Government. When
they were grouped into kingdoms, and when king-
doms were now and again aggregated into empires,
the Village still retained its own self-rule as a recognized
free unit ; when we find, as in the fourth century B.C.,
City States, they were again ruled, as were the villages,
by Councils ; when Alexander, invading India in that
century, demanded 1 00 of the leading citizens of such
a City State as hostages, he was met by the answer :
" How can the city be governed if deprived of its
best men ? "

In recent times, much investigation has been made,
especially by Indians, into what may be called the
Middle Past of India, and two books have been trans-
lated from their original Samskrit, that throw a flood
of light on the organization of India during that
period. These are the Arthashastra of Kautilya, the
Chief Minister of the Emperor Chandragupta Maurya,
in the fourth century B.C. ; the Shukraniti, written in
the 7th century A.D. These shew at once the perfec-
tion of the democratic organization of the people, and

36 INDIA : BOND OR FREE ?

the stability of their institutions. Empires were not
of long continuance, even though as admirably carried
on as that of Ashoka, with his six Viceroys, in the
third century B.C. He well describes the then duties
of a Ruler, when he carved on one of his famous
pillars :

" On the roads I have had banyan trees planted,
to give shade to man and beast ; I have had groves
of mango-trees planted ; and at every half kos (1 J
miles) I have had wells dug ; rest-houses I have
erected ; and numerous watering-places have been
prepared here and there for the enjoyment of man
and beast."

Again, we find the same great Emperor providing
hospitals for men and animals. Eight centuries later,
Fa-Hien, the great Chinese traveller who spent six
years in India in the fifth century A.D., describes a free
hospital :

" Hither come all poor or helpless patients,
suffering from all kinds of infirmities. They are well
taken care of, and a doctor attends them, food and
medicine being supplied according to their wants.
Thus they are made quite comfortable, and when
they are well they may go away."

The evidences for village organization cannot be
challenged, they exist not only in books dealing with
political and social science of which there were,
Kautilya tells us, fourteen schools in his day but in
the records of travellers in the Middle and Late Past
As I wrote, not long ago : " History does not ever

INTRODUCTION 37

contact an India poor, uncivilized, without arts and
crafts of a high order. This perennial condition was
based on its villages, the foundation of the widespread
prosperity of its masses, and the source of its over-
flowing wealth." The evidences include : inscriptions
cut into the stone walls of temples, or on rocks, or
engraved on metal plates, numbers of which have
been dug up ; old books like the Buddhist Jatakas,
giving details of the common life of India, of education
and other subjects ; allusions in the Upanishats ; de-
scriptions in the great Epics, the Mahabharata, the
Ramayana ; discoveries on which new books have been
written by modern Indians, like Dr. Banerjea's Public
Administration in Ancient India, which was his thesis
for the doctorate of the London University ; books
like those of Professors Sarkar, Radhakumal and Radha-
kumud. There is plenty of literature now from which
knowledge can be obtained. It must also be remem-
bered that only a century and a decade have passed
since the village organization was destroyed in the
Madras Presidency. As late as 1830, Sir Charles
Metcalfe, with true insight remarked :

" The Village communities are little republics,
having nearly everything they can want within them-
selves, and almost independent of any foreign
relations. They seem to last where nothing else
lasts. Dynasty after dynasty tumbles down ; revolu-
tion succeeds revolution ... but the Village com-
munity remains the same. . . . This union of Village

38 INDIA : BOND OR FREE ?

communities, each one forming a separate little
State in itself, has, I conceive, contributed more
than any other cause to the preservation of the
peoples of India through all the revolutions and
changes which they have suffered, and is in a high
degree conducive to their happiness, and to the
enjoyment of a great portion of freedom and
independence."

Sir Charles Metcalfe, however, exaggerates the
instability of the larger Units of Government ; he was
probably thinking more of the North of India, exposed
to invasion from beyond its borders, than of the South.
Take but a single instance of extraordinary stability, the
Pandya Kingdom in the South. In a Madras Govern-
ment Manual of Administration, this Kingdom is men-
tioned as existing in 2000 B.C. It was a great Tamilian
Kingdom, famous for its literature as well as for its
trade and commerce, and it endured till 1731 A.D.,
when its last ruler committed suicide to escape from
the wrongs inflicted by the East India Company. I do
not think that Europe can show such a sample of
stability as this Indian Kingdom existing for at /east
3,731 years. But the real interest of history does not
lie in the achievements of conquerors, or the stability
of kingdoms, but in the greatness of their literature
and art, in the presence or absence of freedom,
prosperity and happiness of their peoples.

In comparing the results of the Rules of Indian
Hindus and Muslims, and of Britons over India, we find

INTRODUCTION 39

that from far back into the night of the Past where
we have finally only Indian literature to guide us, but
that of the most wonderful character, implying the
existence of a high condition of culture the masses
of the Indian people have been prosperous, free and
happy, save during the last hundred and sixty odd years,
dating from the time when the East India Company
became a ruling power down to the present day.

The masses suffered when barbarian invaders, like
the White Huns, swept over a portion of the country,
destroying everything in their way, but such invasions
were few and local. When Hindu Kings quarrelled,
the battles were between them and their soldiers
rulers and soldiers made a separate caste and they
respected the merchants and the villagers, because
these were the sources of wealth, and these wars
were generally for the extension of territory. We
read of a battle going on, and of agriculturists
ploughing within sight of the fighting. The lives of the
wealth-producers were sacred. Safe were also places
of Education. The great University of Takshashila
(near the modern Rawalpindi) was on the highway
between India and Central Asia; between B.C. 521,
when the district was annexed by Persia, and A.D.
510, the city passed under the rule of seven different
Nations, yet the University was never molested, but
carried on peacefully its training of youth, till the
White Huns, A.D. 455, totally destroyed it.

40 INDIA : BOND OR FREE ?

The masses suffered also in the rare cases of famine,
and when some epidemic swept over the land. But
we hear nothing of "recurrent famines," such as have
occurred under British Rule, in consequence of the
falling into decay of the old channels for irrigation ;
nor of such extraordinary mortality as occurred in
1918, in the influenza epidemic, when the deaths
sprang from 7,803,882 in 1917 to 14,895,800 in
1918. the reason being the ill-nutrition of the masses,
causing their low power of resistance to any strain
exceeding that of the normal low vitality. In a terrible
famine, under his own rule, Lord Curzon, the Viceroy,
spoke of the surprise of the Government at the little
power of resistance of the people. But should not
Governments know the conditions of the people
they rule ?

I propose to prove in the following pages that
British Rule in India is inefficient in the matters that
concern the Nation's life ; that India is slowly wasting
away and will inevitably perish, unless she regains her
right to rule herself. Former conquerors have settled
down in the land and become Indians, have become
good citizens ; the British are birds of passage, at-
tracted by the high salaries and power attached to
members of " the ruling race," and the pensions
attached to the Services. I know there is much cant
about England being the trustee for India's welfare,
but I also remember the rejoinder to the statement

INTRODUCTION 41

that " Providence had thrown the responsibility for
India's Government on the House of Commons," that
" the House of Commons had thrown it back upon
Providence." I also know that English recruits to the
Indian Civil Service fell off after the Reforms of 1919,
because they gave a little power to Indians and made
young Englishmen feel " insecure," while the stream
of recruits rose again when the Lee Commission had
added a crore and a quarter of rupees to the burden
that Service places on the bowed shoulders of India.
I know also that, until Labour became a power in the
House of Commons, that House had a beggarly show
of empty benches when Indian questions were on the
day's agenda. I know also that the English trustees de-
stroyed the Village Industries of their ward, penalising the
sale of her calicoes and other woven goods in order to
protect the trustee's mill products in Lancashire, and
that the trustee grew richer as the ward grew poorer.
All this and much more is familiar to me. But even if
British Rule had been a success instead of a failure, if
it had not destroyed her Village System and thus
reduced her from literacy to illiteracy, from prosperity
to misery and hunger, I should still claim Self-Rule for
India, since to rule itself is the right of every Nation-
My own life in India, since I came to it in 1893 to
make it my home, has been devoted to one purpose,
to give back to India her ancient Freedom. I had
joined The Theosophical Society in 1889, and knew

42 INDIA : BOND OR FREE ?

that one of the purposes for which it was intended by
the ever-living Rishis who sent to the western world,
as its Founders, Their Messengers H. P. Blavatsky and
H. S. Olcott was the rescue of India from the materi-
alism which was strangling her true life by the revival
of ancient philosophical and scientific religions, and, by
the placing of India as an equal partner in a great
Indo-British Commonwealth, would avert a war of
colour, and bind East and West together in a Brother-
hood which should usher in an Era of Co-operation
and Peace.

Colonel Olcott had revived Buddhism and greatly
uplifted Zoroastrianism ; my first task, as he gladly
acknowledged, was to perform the same service to
Hinduism, and to this I set myself, showing the
insufficiency of materialism as an answer to the prob-
lems of life, and the immense superiority of Hinduism
as a philosophy encasing an all-embracing religion and
a science of yoga, which was an open road to the
worlds invisible, to the ancient Rishis of India and
the East, to the Saints of Christendom, to the Wisdom
which included all religions, excluded none.

This note had been struck by Colonel Olcott ever
since he had landed in India. In his very first lecture
in Bombay, on March 23, 1879, on " The Theosophical
Society and its Aims," he spoke of the " majesty and
sufficiency of Eastern Scriptures," and made an " appeal
to the sentiment of patriotic loyalty to the memory

INTRODUCTION 43

of their forefathers to stand by their old religions."
We found patriotism was aroused by pointing to the
splendour of Indian religious and poetic literatures, and
that " religion must inspire nationality." It was
significant that after the Theosophical Convention at
Adyar, in 1884, a number of the delegates and mem-
bers went over to Madras and formed the organizing
Committee of the National Congress-to-be, which met
in Bombay in 1885, and became the Voice of India ;
the National self-respect, aroused by revived pride
in Hinduism, leading to the National Ideal of Self-
Government.

In his book entitled Indian Unrest, Sir Valentine
Chirol indignantly wrote :

" The advent of the Theosophists, heralded by
Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott, gave a fresh
impulse to the revival, and certainly no Hindu has
done so much to organize and consolidate the move-
ment as Mrs. Annie Besant, who, in her Central
Hindu College at Benares, and her Theosophical
Institution at Adyar, near Madras, has openly pro-
claimed her faith in the superiority of the whole
Hindu system to the vaunted civilization of the
West. Is it surprising that Hindus should turn their
backs upon our civilization, when a European of
highly trained intellectual power, and with an ex-
traordinary gift of eloquence, comes and tells them
that it is they who possess, and have from all times
possessed, the key to supreme wisdom ; that their
Gods, their philosophy, their morality, are on a
higher plane of thought than the West has ever
reached ? "

44 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

It soon became clear that in addition to reclaiming
adults to their ancestral faiths, it was absolutely
necessary to start a system of National Education,
which would include religion. Already Colonel
Olcott had changed the face of Ceylon by making
Education the handmaid of Buddhism, and covering
the Island with numbers of village schools in which
the children learned their ancestral faith. Zoro-
astrianism had its own schools, for the Parsis were a
wealthy though a small community ; no Parsi grew
up outside his religion. The Muhammadans had
established a fine School and College at Aligarh, and
had many schools scattered about the country. Hindus
awoke to the fact that in losing their ancestral Faith
they were also losing their Nationality, no longer re-
calling in their daily prayers their seven sacred cities
from Kedarnath in the Himalayas to Rameshvaram on
India's southernmost border, nor visiting them and her
sacred watering-places on pilgrimages, making all India
one Holy Land to every Hindu. As a result of the
religious awakening, an enthusiastic group of Hindus
in Benares opened the two upper classes of a High
School and the two lower classes of a College, sub-
scribing the necessary funds and forming a Managing
Committee, in 1898. This became famous as the
Central Hindu School and College, and in 1916 it be-
came the nucleus of, and presented its lands, buildings
and funds to, the present Hindu University. The

INTRODUCTION 45

Governor of the United Provinces, Sir Antony Macdon-
nell, denounced it as " seditious," but we went quietly
on, and so justified ourselves by our work that the
Prince and Princess of Wales now King-Emperor and
Queen- Empress of India visited the College when
in India, and their son, the present Prince of Wales,
accepted the first Doctorate of the Hindu University,
its heir and successor. Colonel Olcott, President-
Founder of The Theosophical Society, writing on the
relation between the National religion and Nationality,
remarked : " This has been the keynote of all our
teaching in Asia from the very commencement, and
the creation of the Central Hindu College at Benares
by Mrs. Annie Besant has been made possible thereby."
Colonel O Icott's own work in Madras for the out-
castes, born from his passionate sympathy for their
sufferings and his American hatred for their oppres-
sion, led him to establish in 1894. his first free school
for outcaste boys and girls. He started five of these in
Madras, and they flourished exceedingly. His work for
Buddhist Schools in Ceylon has already been mentioned.
In the Past, Education divorced from Religion was
unknown, as we shall see in dealing with Education.
The Arya Samaj. a reforming Hindu Society, had
taken up educational work at Lahore, and had a
College in which their tenets were taught, and the
Muhammadans, as just said, had erected a first-rate
College and School at Aligarh ; this also, later, like

46 INDIA : BOND OR FREE ?

the Hindu College and School blossomed into a Uni-
versity and is now the Muslim University. These with
the Colleges and Schools under the Theosophical
Trust, all make religion an essential part of their cur-
ricula. The last-named differs from the others in that
its institutions teach groups of students their own re-
ligions, and all join each morning in a Common Act
of Worship, in which a teacher or a student of each
religion represented in the institution recites a well-
known prayer of his own faith, all standing reverently
through the whole. The service generally concludes
with a patriotic song, such as " Vande Mataram," or
one written by Dr. Rabindranath Tagore. It is found
that this reverent recognition of the great religions
has an admirable result in the friendliness of teachers
and students and, together with the total aboli-
tion of beating and all similar brutalities, refines the
lads, makes them fearless, happy and self-disciplined,
as all boys should be. The Scout Movement con-
tributes much to this result, and games and athletics
keep the body strong, healthy and alert. The boys
and the same is true of the girls grow up naturally
into good citizens, patriotic, loving their own country,
but not hating or distrusting other lands.

We shall deal in this book with the Awakening of
India from the drugged sleep which followed the Bat*
tie of Plassey, in 1757, to the Sepoy War which broke
out a century later, after which the East India Company

INTRODUCTION 47

disappeared, and the Queen of England became the
Empress of India. The changes were at first slow,
then more rapid, until the claim was made for Home
Rule in 1906, and was never again silent.

In 1917, having carried on a vigorous propaganda
for Self-Government for three years in a weekly and
then a daily journal, with securities imposed and duly
forfeited, and having vainly though it roused public
opinion fought out the question of the political liberty
of the Press in the Madras High Court, the Govern-
ment of Madras interned two of my colleagues and
myself, and raised a storm of indignation that caused
the superior Government to interfere to set us free,
and caused me to receive the highest honour the
subject Nation could give, the Presidency of the only
Parliament it had, its National Congress. In that Con-
gress I voiced the feeling which had awakened and
which now animates all patriotic Indians with ever-
increasing force ; for though the War has been over
for more than seven years, and India fought for
Britain in every theatre of that War, India is not yet
free. 1 wrote :

"It is not a question whether the rule is good or
bad. German efficiency in Germany is far greater
than English efficiency in England ; the Germans
were better fed, had more amusements and leisure,
less crushing poverty than the English. But would
any Englishman therefore desire to see Germans
occupying all the highest positions in England ? Why

48 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

not ? Because the righteous self-respect and dignity
of the free man revolt against foreign domination,
however superior. As Mr. Asquith said at the begin-
ning of the War, such a condition was ' inconceivable,
and would be intolerable.' Why, then, is it the one
conceivable system here in India ? Why is it not felt
by all Indians to be intolerable ? It is because it has
become a habit, bred in us from childhood, to regard
the Sahab-log (English) as our natural superiors, and
the greatest injury British Rule has done to Indians
is to deprive them of the natural instinct born in all
free peoples, the feeling of an inherent right to Self-
Determination, to be themselves. Indian dress,
Indian food, Indian ways, Indian customs, are ail
looked on as second-rate ; Indian mother-tongue and
Indian literature cannot make an ' educated ' man.
Indians as well as Englishman take it for granted that
the natural rights of every Nation do not belong to
them ; they claim a ' larger share in the Government
of the country,' instead of claiming the Government
of their own country, and they are expected to feel
grateful for ' boons,' for concessions. Britain is to say
what she will give. The whole thing is wrong, topsy-
turvy, irrational. Thank God that India's eyes are
opening ; that myriads of her people realise that
they are men, with a man's right to manage his own
affairs. India is no longer on her knees for ' boons ' ;
she is on her feet for Rights. It is because I have
taught this that I am President of this Congress
to-day.

" This may seem strong language, because the
plain truth is not usually put in India. But this is
what every Briton feels in Britain for his own coun-
try, and what every Indian should feel in India for
his. This is the Freedom for which the Allies are
fighting ; this is Democracy, the Spirit of the Age.

THE INDIAN VILLAGE 49

And this is what every true Briton will feel is India's
Right, the moment India claims it for herself, as she
is claiming it now. When this right is granted, then
will the tie between India and Great Britain become
a golden link of mutual love and service, and the
iron chain of a foreign yoke will fall away. We shall
live and work side by side, with no sense of distrust
and dislike, working as brothers for common ends.
And from that union shall arise the mightiest Empire,
or rather Commonwealth, that the world has ever
known, a Commonwealth that, in God's good time
shall put an end to War."

THE INDIAN VILLAGE
(A). ITS PAST

THE immemorial existence of the Indian Village, the
Laws laid down for its main arrangements, its officials,
its servants, its general inhabitants, its self-contained
character, all this is a matter of common and unchal-
lenged knowledge.

The first thing to notice in the Indian Village is that
it was always self -governed in the Past. The Village
Council was the Panchayat, presumably so-called be-
cause, when villages were not large, a Council of five
(panch) persons sufficed. Putting aside China, for
lack of full information, we have in India the most
accessible material for reconstructing the free civili-
sation which in the West was crushed by feudalism.
Sir Henry Maine, in his Village Communities, points
to this fact, and remarks (p. 122) that the Village
Council " is always viewed as a representative body
and not as a body possessing inherent authority/' and
he speaks of its " essentially representative character."
It is interesting to note that in India, uneducated people

THE INDIAN VILLAGE 51

still elect by one of the methods described in old in-
scriptions as those used in electing village Councils.
To Maine, the interest of the Indian Village chiefly
consisted in the fact that he found living there insti-
tutions for the traces of which in the West he was
laboriously seeking.

" The Indian Village Community is a living and not
a dead institution. . . . Over the greatest part
of the country the Village Community has not been
absorbed in any larger collection of men, or lost in
a territorial area of wider extent. For fiscal and
legal purpose it is the proprietary unit of large and
populous Provinces," (Lecture I, p. 13).

India presents three layers of races Kolarian, Dravid-
ian and Aryan. The first is represented bySantals, Bhils
and other aboriginal tribes, and need not detain us.
The Dravidians, as already mentioned, were the popu-
lation of the South chiefly, and were highly civilized ;
they were also, as noted in the Introduction, spread
over the north-east, north and north-west. Their
civilization was less free than that of the Aryans, for
their Central Governments appointed the headmen of
the villages, in this resembling the English, thousands
of years later. They also set apart a portion of the
village land to be cultivated by the villagers for the
Government, and the crops of this were the only tax.

The Aryans bring the self-contained Village, the
"little republics" of which Megasthenes speaks, and
they elected their own headmen. These villages might

52 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

or might not form themselves into groups ; as men-
tioned in the Introduction, Manu's Institutes speak of
groups of 10, 100. 1,000 (115-117), in which the
1 ,000 villages formed a province (desha). Varieties of
Government arose in these increasing areas, in the
kingdoms formed of provinces, and the empires formed
of aggregations of kingdoms. In the early provinces,
the ruler was expected to visit each village each year
to administer justice in inter-village disputes ; but he
did not interfere in other local matters. This comes
out well in the case of a King's mistress, who wanted
to share his power ; he answered : " My love, I have
no power over the subjects of my kingdom ; I am not
their lord and master. I have only jurisdiction over
those who revolt and do wrong." (Quoted in Lord
Ronaldshay's India: A Bird's Eye View, pp. 137, 138.)
The good citizen lived without fear of the King, who
was essentially a Protector.

The annual visits, of course, became impossible as
kingdoms increased in size, but a King had always a
Council, and Ministers or other officials shared his
duties. "A King without a Council," said Kautilya,
" is like a cart with one wheel."

To return to the self-contained Village, a unit of
that Village System, peculiarly Aryan, as Sir Henry
Maine shows, since they carried it with them in their
emigrations and planted it all over Europe. They
naturally also brought it with them, when they came

THE INDIAN VILLAGE 53

down into India and settled there. We never find
Aryan or even Dravidian India without Village Self-
Government, though, as just said, the Dravidian was
less free ; it was the source, the cause, of the unique
prosperity which continued for ages, but which
finally led to her enslavement, as it attracted to her
the hordes of European merchants, who fought on her
soil, lured Indian Kings into their quarrels, played off
one against the other, and finally reduced them to
practical vassalage as we have seen today despite
the treaties which were supposed to safeguard their
power.

We never, then, find Aryan India without her Village
System, of which the election of all officials was an
essential part ; the Village is always an organized com-
munity, organized for independent self-existence,
containing the necessary elements for a full and satis-
factory social life, educated and cultured.

The first thing to observe is that the village owned
the land on which it lived and worked. There were
always at least three buildings, that may be called
public institutions, needed in every village : the
Temple, with its tank, where the villagers worshipped ;
the School, where their children were educated ; the
Rest-house, where travellers were entertained. The
remainder of the inhabited part of the land was
occupied by the house-sites of the villagers, the roads
and open spaces. The laws secured to every family

54 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

its house-site, with a yard and a vegetable garden ;
the householder was enjoined to plant flowers outside
his house on the left side, and flowering trees were to
line the roads or be planted " very near " the village ;
a list of fruit-bearing trees is given, and directions for
manuring them. Outside all the buildings, ringing
them round, was the arable land for the food supply ;
round this again pasture-land for the flocks and herds ;
Manu's Institutes directs that round small villages a ring
400 cubits wide, and round large villages one of 1 ,200
cubits wide should be pasture. Beyond that came the
forest, either natural, if the village had been built in a
clearing, or made by the planting of wild trees, timber-
trees and others yielding wood wanted for necessary
purposes, for carpenter's work, or manufactures.

We also read in the Arthashastra of the construction
of new villages :

" ... Either by inducing foreigners to immigrate
or by causing thickly populated centres of his own
kingdom to send forth the excessive population, the
King mey construct villages, either on new sites or
on old ruins." (Book II, Chap. I, p. 51.)

Mr. John Matthai (Village Government in British
India) tells us of such a case in the thirteenth
century. A.D. :

" A similar instance of a King taking the initiative
in the formation of a village community appears in a
South Indian inscription of the thirteenth century,
A.D. The village in question was intended to

THE INDIAN VILLAGE 55

accommodate 108 Brahmans. Sufficient land was
purchased for the village site, which was to contain
room for the erection of a temple, and for the
house-sites of the 108 Brahmans, of the village
servants, and of the men in charge of the village
library (Sarasvati-Bhandharattar). The lands were
bought from the old title-holders and tenants, with
all the benefits and appurtenances which belonged
to them ; and these were transferred in their
entirety to the new settlers. A right of way was
secured over certain lands outside the village for
the Brahmans to walk to the tank for the perfor-
mance of their daily prayers (Sandhyavandana).
Land was also provided for grazing cattle, for the
maintenance of the families of the new settlers,
each of whom appears to have received a definite
piece of land, and for the remuneration of the
village officers and artisans." (Chap. I, p. 12.)

Kautilya lays it down as a general principle that it
is the duty of the King to unite families into villages.
He writes :

" Villages consisting each of not less than a
hundred families, and of not more than 500 families
of agricultural people of the Shudra caste, with
boundaries extending as far as a krosha or two (a
krosha or kos was three miles), and capable of
protecting each other, shall be formed. Boundaries
shall be denoted by a river, a mountain, forests,
bulbous plants, caves, artificial buildings or by
trees." (Book II. para 46.)

Directions are given for fortified buildings of different
kinds, according as the centres formed were of
10, 200. 400 and 800 villages. The distribution of the

56 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

population of a State was evidently regarded as one
of the duties of the Ruler ; it should not be allowed to
become congested in any place.

Instructions for the building of such Villages are
given in the Manasara Shilpashastra. (The word
Shastra denotes a Scripture or other book having
authority, and it may deal with any subject, " sacred
or profane " as divided in the West. We do not find
that sharp division in the East. Shilpa denotes Arts
and Crafts.) The Brahmana had his Shastras Bibles-
dealing with religion, philosophy, metaphysics, science,
yoga, with all comprised within the " Brahmavidya,"
the Science of Brahman, the Universal, Omnipresent
Life. This Science has two divisions : the Higher,
41 the direct knowledge of Him by whom all else is
known " that, a man must find for himself ; the
Lower, headed by the Vedas, including all that one
person can teach to another. Every profession, every
art, every craft, statesmanship, and politics had there-
fore its Shastra ; hence the craftsman had his, for his
craft was also a manifestation of the Divine Life :
naught can be excluded from the Universal.

Returning from this disgression, necessary to explain
the fundamental basis of all life and all institutions in
India, I note that Mr. Matthai mentions the reappear-
ance of such artificial manufactured Villages, as they
may be called in the " Canal Colonies of the Panj&b."
in the " Chinab Canal area." He refers us to

THE INDIAN VILLAGE 57

Mr. B. H. Baden-Powell's work, The Indian Village
Community, and tells us how " colonies of peasant
land-holders are encouraged to migrate from con-
gested areas and to form ' artificial villages of peasant
lessees/ raiyatwari villages as they are now called."
(See loc. cit., p. 445.) One may imagine that the
British even are falling under the old spell of India,
when we see the artificial villages of the fourth
century B.C., and of the thirteenth century A.D., reap-
pearing in the twentieth century A.D.

Many lists of village officials and servants are
found, relating especially to the South of India, where
the Madras Government has done most useful work in
encouraging Indian scholars in research work, and in
publishing inscriptions found on rocks and walls, and
on metal plates dug up. The Report of a Select
Committee of the House of Commons, Parliamentary
Paper, 1812, gives a list: Headman; Accountant;
Watchman ; Boundary-man ; Superintendent of Tanks
and Watercourses ; Brahmana, the Priest ; School-
master ; Astrologer ; Washerman ; Barber ; Smith ;
Carpenter ; Potter ; Cow-keeper ; Doctor ; Dancing
Girl ; Musician ; Poet. One or more weavers, a
number of looms, and workers at other crafts, stone-
masons, gold-smiths, copper-smiths, and others are
also mentioned in other lists. On the whole, we find
well-organized communities, providing their necessaries
within their own limits. These officers and servants

58 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

were all paid by " shares " in the village lands, or by
stated shares in the village crops. Gifts to them were
sometimes made at festivals. Their services were
rendered free, as needed by each household. Here
are two copperplate records from the sixteenth
century A. D., when there was a migration which
restored a ruined village ; they may serve as samples :

" To the office of Ironsmith to the westward a
dry field of black soil, in which two turns of grain
may be sown ; also a field of wet land, watered
by the channel, in which two turns of grain may
be sown.

" To the Office of Carpenter to the north a dry
field of black soil, in which two turns may be sown ;
also a field of wet land, watered by the channel, in
which two turns may be sown."

The Ironsmith in this case was Daggoji and the Car-
penter was Nagoji. I am sure that these respectable
artificers never thought that their names would be re-
corded in the twentieth century by a white woman, an
admirer of their old arrangements.

Very interesting light is thrown on the constituents
of a large and well-organized Temple community a
village in itself by an account of the contributions
made by villages under a Chola King, between A.D.
985 and 1013, to the building and provision for the
great Temple at Tanjore. The members of the Village
Assemblies were ordered to supply specified persons
or articles. The details are all given in the South Indian

THE INDIAN VILLAGE 59

Inscriptions (Vol. II, pp. 278-333) : 145 Village Assem-
blies were ordered to supply Brahmanas, Temple
treasurers, Brahmacharis, Temple servants and Temple
accountants ; 114 Village Assemblies were ordered to
supply watchmen. The allowances to these were to
be paid out of the revenue owing to the King. Others
had to supply articles required for the Temple worship ;
the King himself provided no less than 400 dancing
girls for the services in the Temple ; each was given a
house and share of land. Six dancing masters were
given two shares each. An accountant, a fortune-teller,
persons to recite in Samskrit and Tamil, singers, musi-
cians, pipers, drummers, a potter, a barber, a washer-
man, a tailor, a brazier, a carpenter, a goldsmith, are
all provided with land for their support. There were
more than one in each of these classes, and each had
his own share.

It helps one to realise the wealth of the villagers
when such indents could be made on them, and when
the maintenance of these Temple officials and servants
could be paid, year after year, out of the revenue paid
to the King. This was a share of the crops, paid to
him for his protection, and varied from a fourth to a
twelfth in different parts of India. Amusements were
provided for, and the Temple with its processions, in
which the dancing girls played (and still play) a great
part, with the musicians, the pipers and drummers and
singers ; the recitations in Samskrit and Tamil ; the

60 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

visits of pilgrims ; the daily services all these made
up the pleasures of Village life ; nor must we forget
the games, the wrestling, the lathi-play, the dagger-
play, the clubs, and athletics generally. The village
girls also had various dances, which may still be seen
in girls' schools. It has often been said that in
India education and culture spread from the forest to
the villages, with their varied trades, the rich pro-
ducts of their looms, with their recitations and bhajana
(hymn-singing) parties. The restoration of the Village
life would mean the restored gaiety, the happiness of
the masses of the people.

I have said that the land belonged to the Village,
and this common right was secured by periodical re-
allocations of the cultivable land among the culti-
vators ; in other cases, the land was cultivated in
common and the produce was divided. The pasture
land was in common ; every villager could graze his
animals thereon, under the care of one or more
cow-keepers and shepherds ; all could cut wood for
house-building, fuel, etc., from the surrounding forest,
and gather leaves, etc., for manure. Ail watering-
places river channels, ponds, etc. were free to all.
All lands which were tax-free were common. In
some villages, where there were many persons of
one occupation, quarters (cheri) were assigned to those
similarly engaged ; there would be a carpenters' cheri,
a washermen's cheri, and so on. As many falsehoods

THE INDIAN VILLAGE 6t

are told of the oppression exercised by the caste
people over the non-caste, or Panchamas, I may quote
from the records examined by Dewan Bahadur
T. Rangachari (now a member of the Indian Legislative
Assembly), from whose useful compendium many of
these facts are quoted :

" There will be a Kovil, or small Temple for the
Panchamas, free homesteads, free grazing-ground,
small plots of land set apart for their use, right to cut
jungle-wood for fuel or take jungle-produce for
manure, right to take jungle-timber for house-build-
ings, and generally all the claims which the labouring
population has in other villages."

VILLAGE COUNCILS

A Village was governed by a Council ; in a small
Village, with a less developed population, all the adult
men formed a Council ; in the larger, the Council was
elected, and women are sometimes included in it. In
the Madras Annual Epigraphical Reports, we find
detailed information. From these I summarise one
example, taken from the inscriptions cut into a temple
wail in A.D. 918, 919, 920, 921. Six Committees
were to be elected ; Annual, Tank, Garden, Super-
vision of Justice (this included a woman), Gold and
Pancha Varna. Qualifications of voters are laid down,
and the method of election. The village was evidently
large, as it had 30 wards. The names of the qualified
electors in a ward were written on tickets and tied

62 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

together. The' thirty bundles were placed in a pot.
A general assembly was called, and a young boy
plunged his head into the pot and took out a bundle.
This was put in another pot and shaken loose. The
boy again put his head into the second pot, took out
a ticket and placed it in the hand of the officer, " who
shall receive it on the palm of his hand with the five
fingers open " ; he reads out the name and the man
is elected. Thirty men are chosen in this way, 12 of
these, who had served on the Garden and Tank Com-
mittees, or were advanced in learning and age, were
placed on the Annual Committee ; 1 2 were placed on
the Garden and 6 on the Tank Committee, chosen by,
" Karai katti "apparently oral voting, like the " Aye "
and "Nay" of Parliament when "the Question is
put." But the rule here was that there must be
unanimity of votes, and Mr. Matthai tells us (/oc. cit.,
p. 30) that an inscription of the ninth century,
Tinnevelly, lays down the rule : " Members should, in
no case, persistently oppose by saying ' nay, nay ' to
every proposal brought before the Assembly." Such
a persistent non-co-operator was fined. Other ways
of voting were by coloured slips of wood, representing
" Aye " and " Nay," either given to the officer openly,
or thrown secretly into a box. The Buddhist Sangha,
in its local assemblies, used the latter method, and it
may be remembered that the Lord Buddha organized
Mis Sangha on the model of the Councils of His time.

THE INDIAN VILLAGE 63

The laws administered by the Village Councils were
for the most part customary. They must have
occasionally needed to provide new rules for new
circumstances that arose, and in that sense they were
legislative bodies. But their duties were chiefly
administrative the distribution of water, the upkeep
of roads, the seeing that the villagers performed their
rightful share of the general work necessary for the
upkeep and welfare of the Village.

Where the common good was concerned, free
labour was readily given by the villagers, and an
important part of the Village Council's work was
directed to the planning and supervision of such
necessary tasks. The laying out and repairs of roads,
the digging of tanks and wells and water-channels, the
erection of public buildings, were carried out by this
co-operative free labour. So also the cultivation of
lands assigned to any superior authority as payment
for its protection came within the work performed
by the villagers without payment. Some Indian
States, such as Mysore, keep up this ancient custom,
but in Mysore the value of the labour thus given is
calculated and a grant almost equal to its value is
made by the State. Rupees 44,978 were thus earned
by a Village in a recent year.

Mr. C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar (now the Hon. Sir
C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar, K.C.I. E., Vice-President of the
Executive Council of the Government of Madras), says

64 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

in a valuable pamphlet on Co-operat/Ve Societies and
Panchayats :

"In Kautilya's Arthashastra, Book III, Vol. 10,
villagers are contemplated as constructing and main-
taining in their corporate capacity works of public
utility ; and Professor Rhys Davids says : ' Villagers
are described in the Buddhist books as uniting all
their care to build mohallas and rest-houses, to
mend the roads between their own and adjacent
villages and even to lay out parks.' (Vide
P. Banerjea's Public Administration in Ancient India,
p. 293, note 2.) In Mysore, now, in many districts
the villagers give half a day's work free, per week,
for works of public utility, and the aggregate value
of the work done is astounding. Every village in
the times of the Arthashastra (fourth century B.C.)
formed an integral part of the general administrative
system, and the Village was the foundation of the
Governmental edifice. The Village Government of
those days partook not only of the administration of
the executive, but also of judiciary functions, as
will appear from the Ceylon inscriptions dealing with
the administration of criminal justice of communal
courts. To the credit of the Madras Government,
it must be said that, as against Sir T. Munro, who
was a thorough Individualist, the Madras Board of
Revenue desired in the early years of the last
century to leave the authority of the Village institu-
tions unimpaired. But Sir Thomas Munro had his
way, and the Village Communities lost their
vitality."

The Mysore Administrative Report states .

" The Village Communities continued to evince
much interest in this work, and many works of public

THE INDIAN VILLAGE 65

utility, such as construction of school buildings,
sinking wells and opening roads, clearing lantanas and
planting trees, were carried out through their ex-
ertions throughout the State."

In the Report of the Indian Irrigation Commission,
quoted by Mr. Matthai, it is stated that in the Madras
Presidency such works irrigate " collectively an area
equal to that irrigated by all the larger works which
have been constructed by the British Government."
Inscriptions show that both Hindu and Musalman
Rulers considered that one of their main duties was
the making of large reservoirs and water-courses,
while the villagers made the connecting channels and
tanks for their own village. Some of the great works
made in the Tanjore District in the tenth century
A.D. have been allowed to fall into decay, with the
result of recurrent famines when the rainfall fails.

We shall refer to the village schools and their dis-
appearance when we study Education as it was, before
the Village Councils were destroyed.

The Village Council also possessed civil and criminal
jurisdiction within its own boundaries. I have
already mentioned the Committee of Justice. One
inscription tells of action taken by it against a woman
who refused the payment of a tax in the eleventh
century. Another, in the following century, tells of a
roan who was sentenced to keep a lamp burning in the
Village Temple for having accidentally shot a man
5

66 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

" not belonging to his own Village " evidently a
much lesser crime than shooting one belonging to his
own community. The English principle that a " man
should be tried by his peers " seems to have been
carried out very exactly, as we read that a fisherman
should be tried by fishermen, a hunter by hunters.

Mr. Matthai remarks on the great utility of this local
justice. He says :

" The chief advantage of a Panchayat was, of
course, the obligation which 'the very nature of the
tribunal threw upon parties and witnesses to tell
the truth. In a small concentrated community, it
was not likely that any one who cared to live a
comfortable life would venture an untruth before a
council of his fellows. Sleeman, in his Rambles and
Recollections (Vol. II, pp. 34, 35), has an interesting
comment on the difficulty he sometimes felt in
arriving at the truth in cases in which sepoys were
involved, ' and yet, 1 believe, there are no people
in the world from whom it is more easy to get it in
their own village communities, where they state it
before their relations, elders and neighbours, whose
esteem is necessary to happiness, and can be
obtained only by adherence to truth.' Another
advantage which must have helped the long con-
tinuance of the system was that in the greater or
lesser degree of isolation in which village communi-
ties often found themselves, there was no other
tribunal of any competence before which disputes
could be easily lodged. Moreover, the local authority
and knowledge of the elders rendered the PanchSyat
in ordinary cases that is in cases which did not
entail undue labour ' clear and prompt in its
decisions.' "

THE INDIAN VILLAGE 67

Mr. Matthai quotes Mr. A. D. Campbell, I. C S.
(Indian Civil Service) as saying :

" I have often found the parties (disputes on
land revenues) resist all argument on the part of my
native servants as well as of myself, but immediate-
ly concede the point with cheerfulness when
decided in favour of the Government by a
Panchayat."

The habit of obedience to a Panchayat is in the
blood of the people. No Local Government can be
successful that does not rest on the Village Panchayat
as its foundation.

Another important duty of the Village was its hospi-
tality. A part of its produce was set apart for the
discharge of this duty in the Village Rest-house, wherein
travellers were lodged and fed. The watchman met
the traveller, took charge of his weapons, and, after
ascertaining his name, etc., took him to the Rest-
house ; when his stay was over, the watchman con-
ducted him to the Village boundary, gave him back
his weapons, and saw him off the premises, as it
were. The watchman needed to be careful, for he was
responsible if goods were stolen, having to make
good their value to the robbed. The Aryans were a
practical people ; they evidently said : " Why pay a
watchman if we are to be robbed? " And the principle
was carried out, for if man was living in a kingdom and
was robbed, he had a right to claim from the royal

68 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

treasury four times the value of the object of which
he had been improperly deprived. The Village heart,
however, was not hard even to the disreputable, for
a basket of food was hung up at night on a con-
venient tree, lest any objectionable person should be
hungry, yet shun the light.

I may mention here that when villages extended and
met, becoming towns, and when towns and villages
were grouped into Republics under Councils, or into
Kingdoms and Empires, the Panchayat idea still per-
sisted, and the village officers reappeared with larger
duties. In Madras, the Presidency capital, the names
of its districts still bear the names of the old villages
by the grouping of which they were formed, the
termination of their names as districts being the old
words for " village." The ancient office of a member
for an old Panchayat reappears as that of a modern
councillor for a ward in the municipality. Even now
in a large field or open space, little huts spring up, and
presently a board appears with the name of a street ;
or a fishing village links itself with a weaving village,
and presently the old " cheris " above spoken of
reappear.

Even great Empires reproduce Village Panchayats,
-and Kautilya tells us how the Imperial Council of
Chandragupta Maurya, in the fourth century B.C., was
made up of six Panch&yats, each one governing a
Department of the State.

THE INDIAN VILLAGE 69

Kautilya, in describing the duties of the village ac-
countant, shows us how his duties extended as villages
were grouped together. He has to set up :

" Boundaries to villages, by numbering plots of
land as cultivated, uncultivated, plains, wet lands,
gardens, vegetable gardens, fences, forests, altars,
temples of Devas, irrigation works, cremation gounds,
feeding-houses, places where water is freely sup-
plied to travellers, places of pilgrimage, pasture-
grounds and roads, and thereby fixing the boundaries
of various villages, of fields, of forests and of roads ;
he shall register gifts, sales, charities, and remission
of taxes regarding fields.

" Also having numbered the houses as tax-paying
or non-tax-paying, he shall not only register the
total number of the inhabitants of all the four castes
in each village, but also keep an account of the
exact number of the cultivators, cow-herds, mer-
chants, artisans, labourers, slaves, and biped and
quadruped animals, fixing at the same time the
amount of gold, free labour, toll and fines that can
be collected from it (each house).

" He shall also keep an account of the number
of young and old men that reside in each house,
their history, occupation, income and expenditure."

The duties of an accountant in the fourth century
B.C. were evidently no sinecure.

As slaves are mentioned in this extract, and as
Megasthenes remarked that there were no slaves (in
the part of India he knew), it may be well to say a
word on this subject.

70 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

Megasthenes says : " None of the Indians employ
slaves. ... All Indians are free and not one of them
is a slave. . . . The Indians do not even use aliens as
slaves, and much less a countryman of their own."
(Fragment XXVII.) Dr. Banerjea, however, points out
that a mild form of slavery did exist, and says that the
Ddsas, or servants, were originally Dasyus, non-Aryans
captured in war ; their children remained slaves, and
criminals were sometimes condemned to slavery as a
punishment. They could, however, purchase their
freedom, they could not be sold, and ill-treatment was
severely punished. They were part of the family, and
to free them was considered meritorious. Dr. Banerjea
also states that the institution died out, and it may
have disappeared generally when Megasthenes wrote.
Kautilya gives the law concerning slaves, and it was
certainly a very mild form of slavery. Among the
Aryans, if a minor were sold or mortgaged by kins-
men, these latter were fined and the purchasers and
abettors were punished. "Never," he writes, "shall
an Aryan be subjected to slavery." If his life were
mortgaged "to tide over family troubles," his kins-
men must redeem him as soon as possible. Non-
Aryan slaves were not only protected from ill-usage
generally, but women were specially guarded : the
violation of a woman slave set her free, and if a
child were born it also was free. (See Book HI,
pp. 230-233.)

THE INDIAN VILLAGE 71

A mark of the general high character of the people
was the fact that contracts were verbal, not written,
and money and articles of value were deposited for
safe keeping without receipts being given.

No surprise need be felt about this long-continued
and well-organized Village System, since English
observers have remarked on the fact that Local Self-
Government is a characteristic of the East. Kingdoms
change their boundaries ; empires last for a com-
paratively brief time, if we except the Empire of the
Pandavas, of whom Prithviraj was the last royal
descendant. Consider the following clearly-expressed
opinions of thoughtful Englishmen :

Sir John Lawrence said as long ago as 1864 :

" The people of India are quite capable of ad-
ministering their own affairs and the municipal
feeling is deeply rooted in them.

" The village communities, each of which is a
little republic, are the most abiding of Indian institu-
tions. Holding the position we do in India, every
view of duty and policy should induce us to leave as
much as possible of the business of the country to
be done by the people."

Sir Bartle Frere, in 1871, wrote :

" Anyone who has watched the working of Indian
Society will see that its genius is one to represent,
not merely by election under Reform Acts, but repre-
sent generally by provisions, every class of the com-
munity, and when there is any difficulty respecting
any matter to be laid before Government, it should

72 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

be discussed among themselves. When there is any
fellow-citizen to be rewarded or punished, there is
always a caste meeting, and this is an expression, it
seems to me, of the genius of the people, as it was
of the old Saxons, to gather together in assemblies
of different types to vote by tribes or hundreds."

As Mr. Chisholm Anstey said :

" We are apt to forget in this country, when we
talk of preparing people in the East by education,
and all that sort of thing, for Municipal Government
and Parliamentary Government (if I may use such a
term), that the East is the parent of Municipalities.
Local Self-Government, in the widest acceptation of
the term, is as old as the East itself. No matter
what may be the religion of the people who inhabit
what we call the East, there is not a portion of the
country from west to east, from north to south,
which is not swarming with municipalities, and not
only so, but like to our municipalities of old, they
are all bound together as in a species of net-work, so
that you have ready-made to your hand the frame-
work of a great system of representation."

Such quotations might be largely multiplied. Wher-
ever the masses are left to themselves to manage
their own associations, they quickly establish a Pancha-
yat and readily obey its directions ; it is their traditional
form of government, and they instinctively yield it
obedience, while looking with suspicion and distrust
on other forms of government,

The argument that Democracy is foreign to India
cannot be alleged by any well-informed person. Maine

THE INDIAN VILLAGE 73

and other historians recognized the fact that Demo-
cratic Institutions are essentially Aryan, and spread
from India to Europe with the immigration of Aryan
peoples; panchayats, the "village republics/' have
been the most stable institution of India, and only
vanished during the last century under the pressure
of the East India Company's domination. They still
exist within the castes, each caste forming within itself
a thorough democracy, in which the same man may
have as relations a prince and a peasant. Social rank
does not depend so much on wealth and titles as on
learning and occupation. India is democratic in spirit,
and in institutions left to her from the past and under
her control in the present.

(B)._ITS PRESENT

The present condition of the Indian Village is a
heart-breaking contrast to its Past, and when we
consider the huge number of villages in India, we realise
that if India, as a Nation, is not to pass away, she
must be rescued from that fate by restoring the villages
to their former prosperity. The total population of
India in 1921 was 316,017,751 ; out of these only
32,418,776 lived in towns, and 283,598,975 lived in
" rural territory," that is in places with a population of
less than 5,000 persons. There are only 35 towns
with populations of 100,000 and over; only 54 with.

74 INDIA: BOND R FREE?

populations between 50,000 and 100,000. Then we
'have 199 towns with populations between 20,000 and
50,000; 450 with populations between 10,000 and
20,000 ; 885 with populations between 5,000 and
10,000; and 690 with populations under 5,000.
There are only two towns, Calcutta and Bombay, with
populations of over one million. I give these details,
so that readers may realise the immensity of the village
problem in India : even if we subtract the population
of the Indian States, it leaves in " British " India no
less than 247,003,293 human beings.

The total area of India is 1,773,165 square miles ;
of this the Indian States occupy 675,267 square miles,
leaving 1,097,898 for the Provinces under British
Rule. (These figures do not include Burma and
Ceylon, which are usually included when the figures
are taken for " the Indian Empire.") Over these
1,097,898 square miles are scattered, according to the
Statistical Abstract published by Government in 1923,
497,911 villages.

With a population Villages

Under 500 persons there are . . . 364. 1 38

Of 500- 1 ,000 persons there are ... 82,265

Of 1,000-2,000 persons there are ... 38,313

Of 2,000-5,000 persons there are ... 1 3, 1 95

Total number ... 497,911

THE INDIAN VILLAGE 75

(In the Indian States there are 186,849 villages, and
in speaking of the number these are often added in,
and the joint number is put roughly at 700,000.)
It will be noticed that there are only 1 33,773 villages
the population of which is over 500, so that in the
large majority the areas are of manageable size.

Let us consider how these peoples' lives were
affected by the destruction of their Village System.

Four great changes were made by this destruction :

1 . Peasant proprietors were substituted for the
holding of land by the Village.

2. Officials responsible to the Government were
substituted for officers elected by the villagers from
among themselves.

3. Factory-made goods and foreign goods re-
placed the products of village industries, and
destroyed the export trade which brought wealth.

4. A changed method of Government taxation
was created, money of a fixed amount instead of a
fixed proportion of the crop ; and new incompre-
hensible laws were made by an alien Rule ignorant of
immemorial usages. It is well to remember these
four, though in dealing with them they cannot be
separated.

Peasant proprietors were created in the South of
Jndia by the " raiyatwari " system in 1816 by Sir
Thomas Munro. Mr. J. Rangachari gives the following
account of its beginnings :

" The villages and the village community were
broken up. Those till then its servants were turned

76 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

into its masters and instruments of oppression. . . .
We have seen that the village acted as a body.
The Village Assembly did everything on behalf of
the village. But on the introduction of the
Raiyatwari settlement, the revenue official dealt with
the individual raiyat, setting aside the Village com-
munity. Every raiyat was granted a patta (docu-
ment) for the land he cultivated, defining his rent,
etc., and he was informed that he was to continue
to cultivate this land of which he was put in
possession so long as he paid the land-tax thereon,
and in no case was it ever left to the raiyats to
change their lands either annually or practically.
Moreover the revenue officials exercised the right
of transferring a land to any raiyat, if the original
holder was unwilling or unable to pay the revenue
fixed on it. ... In some districts the con-
version was effected by the inhabitants assembling
together and drawing lots in the usual manner, but
under condition that they should keep permanently
the land which fell to them, and for which
they afterwards applied to the Collector for
patta."

The land is re-assessed at intervals, and numerous
instances occur where the peasant is forced to borrow
to pay the increased assessment.

The huge indebtedness of the peasant cultivator is
the despair of all who try to help him. Sir Dinshah
Wacha has pointed out that this load of debt is
constantly increasing. Land revenue also increased
by 80.000,000 rupees between 1882 and 1907. The
salt tax in the budget of two years ago was raised by

THE INDIAN VILLAGE 77

9,000,000 rupees, though a necessary of life. Let
Gopala Krishna Gokhale once more speak :

14 Forty millions of people, according to one great
Anglo-Indian authority Sir William Hunter pass
through life with only one meal a day. According
to another authority Sir Charles Elliot seventy
millions of people in India do not know what it is to
have their hunger fully satisfied even once in the
whole course of the year. The poverty of the
people of India, thus considered by itself, is truly
appalling. And if this is the state of affairs after a
hundred years of your rule, you cannot claim that
your principal aim in India has been the promotion
of the interests of the Indian people."

Land revenue rises almost every year: in 1910 it
was 30.1 crores of rupees (a crore is 10,000,000).
In the succeeding years it was, in crores : 33, 34, 34 J,
34$, 35J, 35f 35, 34, 36$, 34f Taking the same
decade for the total net revenue, we find that it
begins with 74,600,000 sterling and rises to 144.

The increasing indebtedness of the peasants is readily
understood when we learn from a Government official,
Mr. Alexander, Collector of Etawah, that " in ordinary
years," the cultivators live for four months each year
on advances from the
charge a high rate of
more often only a part of it
their crops. An official

state of things : It^fv&$bQ*^

" Small holdings are [ ^
of land cannot be i

78 INDIA; BOND OR FREE?

dition of labourers. The yield that is obtained from
the lands will probably maintain them for a period
of six months, while in the remaining part of the
year they are entirely left to the mercy of the
sowcar (money-lender)."

Another way of increasing the indebtedness in the
Madras Presidency is given by Mr. A. Ranganathan,
a member of the Madras Legislative Council. He
writes in a paper on " The Indian Village as it is " :

" The cultivator finds it difficult in any case to
pay this high land-tax. But the Government makes
it far worse by demanding the revenue due to them
before he has time to gather his crops in. If the
land-tax due by a cultivator is not paid on demand
to the agents of the Government, the defaulter's
property which may be the utensils in his house, or
his milch cow, or the crops on the land or the land
itself, may be proceeded against and the arrears
realized by the sale thereof. Naturally, the raiyat
submits himself to any hardship rather than have
his property publicly attached for land revenue, and
suffer in the estimation of the whole village. My
work brings me into close contact with people in
villages, and I can confidently assert that there are
very few owners of land who are able to pay the
Government dues, without soliciting outside help.
They have to pay their taxes oftentimes while their
crops are still in the fields, instead of waiting until
they are harvested and the farmer can sell at a good
price. So they are compelled to go to the money-
lenders and borrow money at high rates of interest
or on equally unfair terms. Very often they
mortage their crops in advance and undertake to
sell these at some rate which is far lower than the

THE INDIAN VILLAGE 79

prevailing market price, because of this short-sighted
policy of the Government of insisting upon payment
of the taxes in full before the raiyat can choose his
time, and sell his crop at rates most favourable to
himself. This borrowing so very often means that
he has to go from year's end to year's end without
the necessary sustenance in order to repay, or to
carry on until at some later stage he again borrows
money, and again at high rates of interest. If, on
the other hand, the Government allowed the land-
holders sufficient time to collect all their produce,
before they are asked to pay the dues of the
Government, they would obtain fair prices for their
produce and be in a position to sell on favourable
terms, just so much of their produce as may be
necessary and clear the Government dues."

Some time ago I studied the records made by
Government officials on the condition of the small
agriculturists in the United Provinces ; Mr. Alexander's
above statement is drawn from these. The Collector
of Etawah gives the case of a man with a large holding
of 1 7 acres, whose deficiency on the land, with bare
food and clothing, was Rs. 138-9 in the year of
enquiry. Another with seven acres, paid a rent of
Rs. 40 ; food Rs. 50 ; clothing Rs. 7 ; furniture Rs. 2 ;
marriage and funeral expenses Rs. 2 ; deficit was
Rs. 22. Another had 5 acres, a plough and a pair
of oxen ; he made a profit of Rs. 45-14 in the year,
on which he, and a family of four persons " lived." A
fourth had 9 acres ; rent Rs. 68-15 ; sold his crops for
Rs. 70-4; made Rs. 15 by outside labour, and sold

80 INDIA. BOND OR FREE?

milk from two cows for Rs. 18. There are many more
of these family budgets.

Professor Ganguli lectured last year on " The Indian
Rural Problem " (published in the Journal of the East
Indian Association ; the date of the lecture, May 18th).
He analysed the problem into five factors : (1) The
minute sub-division of the land ; (2) the necessity of
borrowing from a money-lender " for the bare
necessities of a primitive agricultural practice " ; (3)
the need of better marketing facilities ; (4) the
exhaustion of the soil ; (5) the physical condition of
the peasant. (1) is the result of peasant proprietorship
instead of communal ; (2) is because the peasant
cannot raise enough on his little holding to support
himself and his family, to say nothing of the land-tax
and the high rate of interest on his borrowings ; on
(3) the professor points out, among other things, that
" generally speaking, the greater portion of the pro-
spective harvest is held in mortgage to the village
trader." The professor gives the differences in prices
of three important crops, between the mortgaged and
the free crops. For the mortgaged crop of Jute the
price of sale is from Rs. 5-8 to Rs. 6. For the free,
Rs. 8-10 to Rs. 9. For Linseed, Re. 1-8 to Re. 1-12,
compared with Rs. 2-8 to Rs. 2-13. For Grain,
Rs. 4-8 to Rs. 5, compared with Rs. 6-12 to Rs. 7-
The exhaustion of the soil (4) is due to the extreme
poverty of the peasant ; he cannot get manure ; the

THE INDIAN VILLAGE 81

professor gives the annual average production of
wheat in bushels per acre, in twelve countries :
Belgium comes at the top with 37 ; India at the
bottom with 12. As to (5) " the chief asset must be
the output of physical energy of which the worker is
capable. As the physical fitness cannot be easily
assessed ' the expectation of life ' at any specified age,
may be taken as an indication of physical well-being."
Five countries are given.

In Denmark a man of 20 may expect to live to
66.3 ; in England to 63.01 ; in Italy to 63.77 ; in
Japan to 60.35. In India there is a sudden drop ; a
man of 20 can, on an average, only expect to live to
47.46. A man of 40 in Denmark may expect to live,
on an average, to 69.7 ; in England to 63.96 ; in
Italy to 68.23 ; in Japan to 66.03 ; but in India only
to 58.02.

The average life-period of a man in India was given
by Mr. Qokhale at 23.5 ; this was and is due to the
enormous death-rate of infants during the first year
of mortal life. This dangerous period is over in the
lowest age given by Professor Ganguli. The shortening
of life is chiefly due to semi-starvation. His figures of
the shortage of food are appalling. The half of the
peasants who used to be always hungry is now two-
thirds. In his own words :

" One cannot challenge the conclusions of Pro-
fessor Dayashankar Dubey that '64.6 per cent of the
6

82 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

population lives always on insufficient food, getting
only about 73 per cent of the minimum require-
ment far maintaining efficiency. In other words it
clearly shows that two-thirds of the population
always get only three-quarters of the amount of
food-grains they should have.' But this state of
semi-starvation is chiefly the result of persistent soil-
erosion and soil-exhaustion, which have brought the
greater part of the cultivated land to its fertility
level, and if this is allowed to continue, the day of
reckoning is not far."

In 1915, in the Indian National Congress, I pointed
to the fact that the greatest danger threatening India
was a " revolution of hunger." That danger is now
nearer. In the eighteenth century Phillimore said of
India that "the droppings of her soil fed distant
regions." Two thousand years before, Megasthenes
spoke of the " abundant means of existence " of the
cultivators. The Government knows well enough the
ghastly suffering, for one of its own Reports says :

" Occasional famine is only the pronounced ex-
pression of continuous scarcity, or, in other words,
the complete failure of crops in certain parts of
India, which are so severe as to attract public notice,
are but as the deep and long-cast shadows of de-
pression in the agricultural out-turn which occur
almost every year; that the problem in fact of
saving a portion of the population from misery and
semi-starvation over vast areas of India is an annual-
ly recurring one. . . . The ancient rulers resorted
from time immemorial to the expedient of storing
water in the monsoon for utilisation during the sub-
sequent dry weather."

THE INDIAN VILLAGE 83

Quite so. Then why have not the British Rulers
followed the immemorial custom? Why has it been
left in Madras Presidency until, after the Reforms of
1919. an Indian has come into power and, by following
the example of his ancestors, the Hon. Sir C. P. Rama-
swami Aiyar has succeeded in passing a Bill which, by
irrigating 300,000 acres of land, will put an end to the
" recurring " famines in that district ? He will deal with
another recurring famine district in a few months.

It is worth remembering that, when Indians ruled
Indians, Megasthenes remarked that " famine never
visited India, and that there has never been a great
scarcity in the supply of nourishing food."

I venture to repeat a summary made by myself of
the villagers' grievances under British Rule.

The Forest Laws, made by Legislators inappreciative
of village difficulties, press hardly on them, and only in
a small number of places have Forest Panchayats been
established. In the few cases in which the experiment
has been made the results have been good, in some
cases marvellously good. The paucity of grazing
grounds for their cattle, the lack of green manure to
feed their impoverished lands, the absence of fencing
round forests, so that the cattle, straying when feed-
ing, are impounded and have to be redeemed, the
fines and other punishments for offences ill-under-
stood, the want of wood for fuel, for tools, for repairs,
the uncertain distribution of the available water, all

84 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

these troubles are discussed in villages and in local
conferences. The Arms Act oppresses them by leaving
them defenceless against wild beasts and wild men.
The union between Judicial and Executive functions
makes justice often inaccessible and always costly both
jn money and in time.

On this last point let us listen to Mr. Ranganathan :

" The people suffer also in regard to the admini-
stration of Justice. When referring to the Village
Headmen I stated that they, as a rule, combined in
themselves the offices of Magistrates and of Civil
Judge. But it is one thing to give them the power
to try cases and another to create sufficient trust in
their integrity and impartiality among the people
so that they may freely utilise the services of the
Headman to dispose of their petty Civil and Criminal
cases. Enough has been said to show how the
short-sighted changes introduced by the British
brought about diversities of interests and lack of
good-will between the villagers and their local
officers, with the consequence that the gulf be-
tween them has been widening so far that the
common folk have come to regard the village
officials as irresponsible representatives of an un-
sympathetic bureaucracy and think it futile to expect
fair play and justice at their hands. So people
requiring judicial redress now go long distances to
file their cases before the regular tribunals and are
obliged to be constantly away from their villages to
be present during the enquiry of their cases. This
means not only great dislocation of work at home
and loss of income for the days they are absent from
the village, but, in addition, considerable expense
and inconvenience to all concerned in the cases.

THE INDIAN VILLAGE 85

" It is comparatively in a few classes of cases that
Courts in India are permitted the help of jurors or
assessors. The trying Magistrate or Judge has
generally no local knowledge of the conditions or
habits of the people who appear before him* As
the enquiry takes place as a rule far from the place
of offence or the cause of action, there is not
available, at the place of enquiry, that public opinion
which, being acquainted with the facts of the case,
can immediately and effectively check any tenden-
cies towards exaggeration or prevarication on the
part of parties or witnesses to a case. In the old
days, the old village Panchayat would deal with the
civil and criminal cases of comparatively less serious
character, and dispose of them in their own village.
Instead of that they now have to go long distances in
order to have their cases heard. You will understand
the inconvenience that is caused to the people,
especially when I tell you that in Madras, there is
one Criminal Court for every 55 villages or 150
square miles. And one Civil Court for every 2 1 2
villages or 575 square miles. Think of all the trouble
the people are now put to to obtain justice. Jus-
tice, if it is to be worth anything at all, should be
cheap and prompt, instead of which it is extremely
costly and doubtful whether it is obtainable at all.
The truth can be known only in the villages and
not by people living far away, who have no
knowledge of the habits or veracity of the people
they are dealing with. In my own experience, I
have had to deal with such cases, when acting as a
Government Officer. On one occasion, I had a
man come to me with a complaint. I asked him to
state his case, and in the end he alleged that his
house had been broken into and that some jewels
and other things had been stolen. I felt there was

86 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

something wrong, and still I did not know how I
could, on the mere statement of the man, come to
the conclusion that his story was not true. Some
time after, without telling anybody, I went to the
man's village, and, in the presence of the villagers
there, asked him what he had to say, and I was
surprised when the man bluntly said that his com-
plaint was not true. Do you think that this man
was suddenly filled with remorse and wanted to tell
the truth ? No. But he knew it was no use, and
would be unwise to give his testimony in the village,
where I had the means of checking myself his state-
ment, whereas I had it not before. He knew he
would be contradicted by the people there if he
made any untrue statements. I was thus able to
give justice to the other man, better than if I had
dealt with the case a long way off. That is one of
the defects of the present method of administering
justice."

The self-contained character of the Indian village,
spoken of by Sir Charles Metcalfe (see Introduction),
has largely disappeared at the present time, as the
result of the destruction of the self-ruled village, with
its Panchayat, elected annually, its artisans and crafts-
men, its village servants and the interdependence of
all its inhabitants. Mr. A. Ranganathan writes :

" tn the old days the village had its carpenter,
blacksmith and people of similar avocations. Their
duty was to attend to the preparation and repair of
the implements of the villagers, to manufacture all
the vessels they required, and things of that sort.
These people also had some lands given them free
of tenure or on favourable terms, and, like the

THE INDIAN VILLAGE 87

other village officials, were receiving some emolu-
ments from the people of the village. The Govern-
ment have taken over the control of these service
lands, with the result that these artisans grow very
reluctant to discharge their duties to the people,
and the people, on the other side, do not feel
compelled to give them their share, as they did in
the old days, to give them the emoluments which
are their due, so that a number of these villages
now have no artisans of their own, and the culti-
vators have to go to neighbouring villages to get
their tools made and their implements repaired. And
the number of villages in this position is increasing,
as I can safely testify from my own knowledge.
The result is that an unfortunate villager, who may
have a plough needing repair, has to take it to a
far-off village to get it attended to, instead of,
as hitherto, getting it attended to in his own
village."

Villagers have made similar complaints to myself ;
! have written elsewhere, and poor men have told me,
of the difficulties they have to meet ; it was easy to
cultivate plots for the carpenter, the ironsmith, the
weaver ; in return the tools and the implements were
kept in good order, cloths were supplied, so that
both sides profited and neither side suffered. A
purely agricultural village cannot be self-contained,
prosperous or contented. Much is heard in these days
about Hindu-Musalman troubles, but foreigners do not
probably realize that these scarcely ever occur in the
villages ; they are almost entirely confined to the
towns. The reason is a very simple one. Village

88 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

parents tend to bring up their children to pursue their
own type of gaining a livelihood. (A very intelligent
son will be sent to a town school, will go on to the
University, and become a doctor, a lawyer, an engi-
neer. The rest of the family will follow the occupa-
tion of their parents.) Hindus and Musalmans in the
same village tend to follow separate occupations, and
thus become interdependent, and cannot afford, are
not inclined, to quarrel seriously, much less to break
out into riots. When villagers quarrel, they go to law
as a rule ; they do not fight.

The results of the insufficient food, continuing year
after year, on the vitality of the peasants are defin-
itely shown by their slight resistance to epidemics,
and to all forms of disease. In the influenza epidemic
whole villages were depopulated, and the death-rate
was doubled in India as a whole. The infantile mortal-
ity is always shocking. The death-rate of a decade
per mille of boys under a year, in the last Statistical
Abstract, omitting 1918, the influenza year, was:
214, 216, 192, 218, 208,209,211,228,201. The
death-rate of girls was 196, 198, 196, 204, 195, 194,
198, 220, 188. There are two main causesthe low
vitality of the peasants, always underfed, and, in the
large villages, the bad sanitary conditions with lack of
doctors and dispensaries. Despite all pleading the
Governments recognize only the western medical
system, though the masses of the people flock always.

THE INDIAN VILLAGE 89

if they get the chance, to |a doctor practising the
ancient systems. The first Medical College for the
ancient systems was founded in Madras by the efforts
of an Indian Minister three years ago, against the
furious opposition of the foreign medical men. Yet
their numbers are ridiculously small compared with the
vast Indian population. Among the workers in factories
the death-rate among babies throws the above figures
into the shade. H. E. Lady Wilson, the wife of the
Governor of Bombay, speaking on infant mortality in
Bombay, placed it at 622 per mille, but the year was
not given. Other years were mentioned by her when
the mortality was 400 and 300. It is not surprising
that Professor Ganguli, realising that two-thirds of the
Indian population get, year after year, only three-
quarters of the food they need for decent health,
says that "it is clear that the time has come for
decisive action." India is literally dying slowly from
semistarvation, an agonising prolonged death. It
began in the second half of the eighteenth century,
when we read of the awful famine of 1 770, of which
the Imperial Gazetteer says :

" The Hooghly every day rolled down thousands
of corpses close to the porticoes and gardens of
the English conquerors. The very streets of Calcutta
were blocked up by the dying and the dead. ... (It
was) officially reported to have swept away two-
thirds of the inhabitants." (Loc. eft., ii, 480.)

?0 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

Between 1770 and 1900130 years there were
twenty-two serious famines, as well as the recurring
minor ones and the continual semi-starvation. I saw
the famines of 1896 and 1899, and wrote of " the
nightmare railway stations, into which living skeletons
forced their way, holding out skinny hands and crying
out in agony to the passengers for food."

We have seen the prosperity of Indian villages in
the Past their normal state through millennia. We
have seen the Government Report from which a quota-
tion is given above, stating that " famine is only the
pronounced expression of continuous scarcity " (italics
mine). British Rule has wrought this change in a
century and three-quarters. If it be true that an
ancient Indian Sage warned a young King to beware
of the sorrows of the weak, " for the tears of the weak
undermine the throne of Kings," surely it is well for
Britain as well as for India that some should strive to
win for this ancient land the Freedom which alone can
save her from perishing. Only Self -Rule can rescue
her. And there is hope when, as I wrote last year,
an Indian Executive Councillor " has faced the horror
of the annual recurrence of famine, and is grappling
with it with every prospect of success, at least in the
Madras Presidency : and he meets it in the old Indian
way by irrigation, turning desert into fertile soil. From
this one striking illustration, we may judge something
of the possibilities which open before us, when India

THE INDIAN VILLAGE 91

ceases to be a tributary State, drained of men and
money for the advantage of the British Empire, her
Nationals treated with contumely all over that Empire,
except in Britain itself, and even in her own land allow-
ed only ' a share ' in the Government, a share which
can at times be suspended by the unfair use of
' emergency powers '." Other Indians in other Pro-
vinces will surely follow in the steps of C. P. Rama-
swami Aiyar, when India comes to her own, and turns
herself to the recovery of what she was in her splen-
did Past.

(C). THE REMEDY

The only remedy for the present condition of Indian
villages is legislation in the Imperial Parliament of Great
Britain. Not long ago Lord Birkenhead, His Majesty's
Secretary of State for India, announced that the pre-
sent Government would consider any measure proposed
by Indian leaders. Such a Bill the Commonwealth
of India Bill has been officially adopted after full
consideration by His Majesty's Opposition in Parliament,
Jed by the late Prime Minister, the Rt.
MacDonald, P. C.. after its first
of Commons last December
ordered to be printed. This Bif|g|jjfe fruit
active agitation for Home Rule, f|
in the Indian National

92 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

India might be placed on an equality with the Self-
Governing Dominions ; the history of this agitation will
be found in chapters IV and V on " The Awakening
of India " and " Home Rule for India." This Bill was
drafted by the Convention of 1 924-5 after three years
of work, including two Conferences in February, 1923
and 1924, which outlined the scheme, organised a
propaganda for it, and finally merged itself into a
Convention which met in April, 1924. The story will
be found in chapter V, " Home Rule for India."
Suffice it to say here that these bodies were composed
of 231 members of the Legislative Central and Provin-
cial (elected since the Reform Act of 1919), 19 elected
representatives of the National Home Rule League,
and 26 others, some elected and some prominent
Indian leaders, like Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, K. C.S.I., late
Law Member of the Governor-General's Council, who
was elected President of the Conferences and Con-
vention, and the Rt. Hon. V. S. Srinivasa Sastri, P.C.,
elected Vice- President. It would be difficult to find a
more representative body.

To my mind the most vital feature of this Bill is not
so much that which gives India Dominion Status, " a
Free State in a Federation of Free States owing
allegiance to His Imperial Majesty the King Emperor," as
stated in the Preamble, but the revival of the ancient
type of Local Self -Government, in the Villages, the group
of Villages (Taluka) and the grouped Talukas (District).

THE INDIAN VILLAGE 93

This is built up from the bottom in the old way, from
the Village.

The principles are laid down which each Provincial
Council shall apply in its own Province ; these sub-
Provincial authorities " shall exercise the rights of
Self -Government/' the Village having its Panchayat,
the Taluka its Sabha, the rural District its Samiti, the
Urban its Municipality. All may appoint Committees
with delegated power and duties.

All electors must have reached the age of 21 and
upwards.

The suffrage is graded : Every resident villager has
a vote for the Panchayat. For the Taluka Sabha, the
elector must be resident and have one of the following
qualifications :

1 . All members or ex-members of village pan-
chayats.

2. All literates in a language of the Taluka, or
persons trained in a village workshop, or skilled in
some craft.

3. All who have a monthly income or allowance
of Rs.10 and above.

4. All owners and occupiers of land with Rs.10
per annum or more as land-tax.

5. All owning or occupying a house, or a part of
it, of the annual rental value of Rs.6.

For the District (there are 26 in Madras Presidency,
which has over 40 millions of inhabitants) the elector

94 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

must be a resident and have one of the following
qualifications :

1 . All members or ex-members of Taluka Sabhas
or Ward Panchayats.

2. All with primary, or equivalent technical,
education.

3. All who have a monthly income or allowance
of Rs.15 and above.

4. All owners or occupiers of land with Rs.20
per annum or more as land-tax.

5. All owning or occupying a house, or a part of
it, of the annual rental of Rs.18 or more.

(The rupee varies in value as regards English money,,
from 1s. 4d. to 1s. 6d.)

It will be noticed that the qualifications for electors
in larger areas than the village are : (1) a little know-
ledge of administration and having won the confidence
of his fellows ; (2) or an amount of education enabling
htm to know what is going on in the area ; or manual
ability making him useful ; (3) or some wage or
pension, 13s. 8d. in the one case, 1 in the other ;
(4) or paying a small rent to the State for the use of
its land ; (5) or a very low rent.

Qualifications for members of these bodies are also
laid down ; it must be remembered that our Aryan
forefathers were very much more practical than their
descendants in Europe, after they were demoralised
by feudalism, as was shown, inter alia, by their village

THE INDIAN VILLAGE 95

watchman being compelled, if there was a theft in the
village, either to recover the article or pay its value
unless he could trace it out of the village, the King
being liable to pay from his treasury four times the
value of the stolen article ; why pay for protection
and not obtain it ? Hence they required knowledge or
capacity in those they elected to administer areas not
under the eyes of the persons they elected to
discharge responsible duties. All the villagers knew
their village affairs and each other. So all villagers
could be electors and members. But what did the
villager know of a great group of villages, a hundred
or a thousand, the needs of their people, or the
capacities of those elected to look after them ?

So members of a Taluka Sabha or a District Samiti
must not be less than 25 years of age. In the former
he must have had primary education, or have been an
ex-member of a Village Panchayat for a full term. In
the latter, he must have had secondary (middle
school) education, or be an ex-member of a Taluka or
Ward Sabha for a full term.

it will be noted that with a school once more in
every village, free and compulsory, all the boys and
girls when they are 21 will have a vote for the Sabha
and the Samiti ; and this will be automatic ; there
will be no need for more Suffrage Bills.

Let us consider now the respective powers and
duties of these three bodies. These are classified

96 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

under three heads, and others could, of course, be
added, if found necessary. But it will be seen how
serious and responsible will be the work of these sub-
Provincial authorities :

THE POWERS OF THE VILLAGE PANCHAYAT

(a) Education and Recreation. Primary schools,
village workshops, libraries, parks, gymnasia, recrea-
tion grounds, etc.

(b) Protection. Control over erection of build-
ings, sanitation and conservancy, prevention of public
nuisances, fairs and festivals, medical help and village
dispensary, control over offensive and dangerous
trades, village cattle pounds, registration of births and
deaths, civil and criminal jurisdiction in simple cases
exercised by a court of summary jurisdiction, village
police, local militia, if any.

(c) Economic and Industrial Ministration Co-
operative stores and banks, wells, tanks and canals,
cottage industries, village irrigation, village fairs, cattle
stands, village forests and grazing grounds, roads and
bridges, certain powers of local taxation and other
works of public utility handed over by the Taluka
Sabha.

POWERS OF THE TALUKA SABHA

(0) Education and Recreation. Lower secondary or
.middle school education, technical schools, model farms.

THE INDIAN VILLAGE 97

(b) Protect/on. Control over markets, fairs, etc.,
hospitals and dispensaries, civil criminal jurisdiction in
simple cases or in appeals from village cases exercised
by a specially appointed bench of magistrates, decision
of disputes between villages, control in cases of epi-
demics, co-ordination of village police, Taluka police or
reserve force.

(c) Economic and Industrial Ministration. Stock
of agricultural machinery for hire, stud animals, sup-
plies of seeds suitable for different soils in the Taluka,
main roads between villages, small irrigation channel,
promotion of village industries, other works of public
utility handed over to the Taluka Board by the District
Samiti, central co-operative stores and banks for help-
ing village stores and banks.

POWERS OF THE DISTRICT SAMITI (RURAL)
OR MUNICIPALITY (URBAN)

(a) Education and Recreation. Higher secondary
or high school and college education. Technical
college, a technical institute studying soils, manures,
crops.

(b) Protect/on Co-ordination of Taluka police,
district police or special reserve, larger hospitals and
dispensaries, inspection of foodstuffs, epidemic disease,
public health, settlement of disputes between Taluka
boards, civil and criminal jurisdiction within fixed limits,

7

98 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

and deciding sanctioned appeals from Taluka benches
by a specially appointed bench of magistrates

(c) Economic and Industrial Ministration. Co-
ordinating local stores and banks and other village
enterprises of an industrial or commercial nature and
model farms, supply of information needed by culti-
vators, craftsmen and others, stores of seeds for supply-
ing Taluka and model farms, forests, district roads,
district waterways and railways, district bridges, levying
cess and raising loans within prescribed limits, allocating
provincial subsidies among Taluka Boards if necessary.

Provided that District Samitis (Rural) or Munici-
palities (Urban) are empowered as far as possible to
own all public means of transport, lighting, water-
supply, markets within their area and to ultilise the
profit for decreasing taxation.

When this Bill becomes law, the gradual upbuilding
of India will begin. The chief danger will arise from
the habit of centralisation, caught by the Intelligentsia
from their English Education, and in most cases of
official habits forced upon them by English official
superiors. They are all so accustomed to delegate
powers from above, that they cannot believe in the
exercise of powers on the initiative of the person
acting.

Mr. W. R. Gourlay, I.C.S., Director of Agriculture
and Co-operative Credit Societies, Bengal, speaks from
experience of village life :

THE INDIAN VILLAGE 99

" The majority of cultivators within their own
villages have a character for honest dealing among
their neighbours, and it is this character for honesty
which is the basis of all co-operative credit.

" The villagers pledge their character as security
for their loans." (Madras Bulletin, September
1909.)"

The same fact is often noted by those who form
small Co-operative Credit Societies among the very
poor.

But Lord Ronaldshay and the Earl of Lytton, succes-
sively Governors of Bengal, give their own testimony
to what they have seen of the working of the Bengal
Union Boards Act, and their testimony is beyond dis-
pute. (A Union Board is a Board superintending
several villages, practically a Taluka Board.)

I will make no apology for a long quotation, be-
cause of its high authority. It is taken from Lord
Ronaldshay's book, India : A Bird's Eye View. He
remarks that the system "was suitable to Indian tradi-
tion," and makes some rather sharp remarks on the
way the English insist on forcing their own institutions
in countries they dominate, quoting Emerson's remark
(noted above in the Introduction) that :

" ' The Englishman sticks to his traditions and
usages, and, so help him God, he will force his island
bye-laws down the throat of great countries like
India, China, Canada, Australia' " (p. 125).

100 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

He says :

" It must be admitted that, in deciding upon the
type of local authority to be established in India, the
authorities of the day went a long way towards justi-
fying that somewhat caustic criticism " (p. 126).

After commenting on the result in India, he
proceeds :

" The result was not altogether happy, and a
people with a less robust belief in the excellence of
their own institutions, might indeed have found cause
for discouragement at the manner in which the use-
ful if somewhat unambitious sphere of municipal
administration at any rate, the great principle of
' Government by the people and for the people '
was given application " (ibid.). " Existing institu-
tions are, to a considerable degree, alien from the
spirit of the people " (p. 131).

Lord Ronaldshay deals with the Past of India, and
the Guilds with their own laws which the King did
not make :

" Such laws, according to the ancient law-books
of the country, commanded recognition at the hands
of the King (i.e., the central government), who was
further charged with the duty of seeing that they
were respected. That ' cultivators, traders, herds-
men, money-lenders, and artisans have authority to
lay down laws for their respective classes,' is asserted
by Gautama some centuries B.C., and that ' the
King must discipline and establish again on the path
of duty ail such as have erred from their own laws,
whether families, castes, guilds, associations, or

THE INDIAN VILLAGE 101

people of certain districts/ is emphasized by Yajna-
valkya. These bodies, therefore, were independent
of the central government ; they were not its off-
spring, nor were their functions the product of
devolution, as in the case of such bodies as the
borough and country councils of Great Britain. On
the contrary, they were social organizations with
authority which was not derived from, but which
compelled the recognition of, the central govern-
ment. Side by side with, or out of, these early
guilds came into being village assemblies modelled
on similar lines and possessing an equivalent
status, which seem to have exercised judicial and
municipal powers, and to have administered endow-
ments for secular and religious purposes (pp. 132,
133). . . .

" I have devoted some space to a consideration
of the system of administration in force in Ancient
India because of the obvious bearing which it has
upon the question which I have been discussing,
namely, the unsuitability of the particular type of
local self-government which we have instituted to
the genius of the Indian people. It is, I think, a
not unreasonable deduction from the knowledge
which we now possess of the theory and practice
of government in Ancient India that if, instead of
creating municipal and district boards of the Western
type, we had begun by re-creating the village
organizations which were congenial to the people,
local self-government would have made more satis-
factory progress than has actually been the case.
The steps which have been taken in various parts
of India in recent years to establish village self-
governing bodies have been handicapped by the
prior existence of district and local boards. Instead
of being the foundation of the whole edifice, they

102 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

have had to be tacked on to the already existing
institutions, and difficulty has, consequently, been
experienced in fitting them into the general scheme
(pp. 139, 140).

"... It was not until 1919 that a special Act
known as the Bengal Village Self -Government Act
was passed with the object of placing union boards
as far as possible upon a sound statutory basis, and
of providing for the creation of village courts and
benches. The salutary return in the direction of
the ancient indigenous system is breathing new life
into local self-government. Let me conduct the
reader to a Bengal village, the scene of the activities
of a newly founded union board (p. 189).

" To such a village in the Dacca district I came
not long after the passing of the Village Self-
Government Act of 1919, to meet the members of
the union board ; and was conducted to a pandal
erected in a small open space, the counterpart of
the English village green. All round the pandal in
perspiring groups stood the sparsely clad population
of the village, interested spectators of what was
going forward. . In front of me in the centre of the
pandal stood a table, on which were placed the
books of the union board ; and round me were
seated the members of the board, bearded and
reverend seigneurs, men who carried the confidence
of their fellow-villagers. . . .

" A small tax known as the chaukidari tax for the
tinkeep of the village police is a compulsory levy ;
but under the Village Self-Government Act, a union
board may impose additional taxation to enable it
to undertake various works for the benefit of the
villagers. I was shewn the accounts. The board,
though of recent creation, had imposed additional

THE INDIAN VILLAGE 103

taxation amounting to a quarter of the chaukidari
tax. Did the villagers object ? I asked. At first,
yes ; but it was explained that the board wanted
the money for the construction of certain wells.
Now above ail things the villagers wanted wells, for
a supply of good drinking water was a long-felt
want. They would see what the board could do. The
board, it seemed, did very well ; and during the
coming year the rate of taxation was to be doubled
for further improvements. Presently I saw the wells,
excellent circular shafts lined with brick, some feet
in diameter, and with a neat coping round the top.
The cost had been Rs. 300 20 per well, and
neither the district board nor any other agency, I
was told, could construct such wells for less than
double the sum ; for the village had done the work
itself ; the chairman of the board had kept the
accounts and done all the clerical work ; a member
of the board had supervised construction ; the labour
had come from the village itself. There had been,
in fact, no middle-man charges, and the village had
got the full value of every rupee spent. The year
before, twenty-five of the boards in the district had
raised no revenue by taxation other than that of
the chaukidari tax ; this year all but fourteen of the
one hundred and thirty union boards which had
been established within the area had levied
additional rates (144146). . . .

" The trial of petty criminal cases and civil suits
was a function of the guilds of ancient India, and the
experimental establishment of village courts and
benches under the Act of 1919 met with immediate
success. In the year 1921, 652 criminal cases and
2,218 civil suits were instituted before fourteen such
courts and benches, a single village court disposing
of 260 civil suits and 66 criminal cases.

104 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

" It would seem, therefore, that the village is stilf
the fundamental unit in the communal life of India ;
and it is worth noting in passing, as significant of the
feelings of the village population, that at a recent
conference of representatives of union boards in the
Dacca district, a proposal was put forward for dis-
cussion for the abolition of district boards. More
significant still, the proposal was carried (p. 148)."

Lord Lytton, the present Governor of Bengal, has
given similar testimony, and he has stated that, on his
return to England he will make the competency of
these Union Boards an argument for giving the consent
of Parliament to Home Rule.

Bengal has proved what Indians can do when they
are given a chance and left to use it. The very name,
the Village Self-Government Act of 1919, is in itself an
encouragement. If the Union Boards had been called
Taluka Sabhas it would have been still better, for each
Union Board has a number of villages under it, as in
our Commonwealth of India Bill.

In Madras Presidency a number of different Pan-
chayats have been formed for different purposes ; we
have Village Panchayats, Village Forest Panchayats,
Village Courts ; each works well, even admirably, but
there should be one Village Panchayat, with its Com-
mittees, as mentioned in Section (a), with its Commit-
tees, making a dignified body, and co-ordinating all
village affairs, as in Dewan Bahadur's admirable Pan-
ch&yat Act, fully discussed by the leading politicians of

THE INDIAN VILLAGE 105

Madras in the " Madras Parliament " (a local Debating
Society ; see Chapter IV), followed in the Common-
wealth of India Bill, now before the British House of
Commons, read a first time, and ordered to be
printed by it.

Bombay Presidency has also Village Panchayats and
District Boards ; but the Village Panchayat has a limited
suffrage, the District Board universal suffrage. Both
in Madras and Bombay the old tradition is ignored.

I began by saying that for the establishment of
Indian Local Government legislation is necessary.
Voluntary effort might not succeed, but it must be
tried, if we cannot obtain the old system by any other
means.

One other fact that Lord Ronaldshay mentions i*
significant. He was asking what the villagers thought
of the work of the Union Board, and he tells how an
elderly man of good presence asked to speak. They
had been discussing a tank ; he said he was a pilot
and had worked in local vessels all his life ; his village
needed a tank, and he laid before Lord Ronaldshay a
good sum towards the making of it.

I once summarised the way of old India in a lecture
on the Revival of the Panchayat, as follows :

" Villages were helped partly by communal enter-
prise and partly by benefactions such as this elderly
man of today gave. It was in that way that the
villages were made such satisfactory places to live in :
they controlled their own taxation, they had labour.

106 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

voluntary, unpaid, and all the village provided this by
giving their work. You can see at once that amongst
a people who live frugally, who are not in search
of luxuries, but who live pleasantly, a system
of this sort, where you have small areas, where
labourers are willing to labour, where those who
can keep accounts are willing to keep accounts, with
co-operation throughout the village, and where they
see the way their own money is spent, instead of
having to pay takes which find their way into the
hands of some superior officers and the villagers
never know what has become of the money they
have contributed, will be successful. I find it is true
of the Indian, the poorer classes especially, that
they are ever willing to give their work or money
for anything which they can see, which results either
in work for the village to which they belong, or
advantage to the village as a whole. A good deal
of the communal feeling has departed, but if we
can see again that village land is appropriated to the
village, if we can undo the work of the last century
and let the people feel that the land on which they
live belongs to themselves, that everything that is
put into it will be a benefit to themselves, any work
they do for it is a work which makes the whole
village the better for it, I know from what I have
seen that you will have many bands of self-
respecting people who will take a deep interest
in their village, and the fact that they are able to
make it looked up to by less fortunate villages
will encourage them. And it is this feeling of
loyalty and duty to the Society in which they live,
which is of the very essence of the Indian
character, because there has always been the idea
of obligation to the family, to the community.
Utilising that feeling, which has come down through

THE INDIAN VILLAGE 107

untold generations, using that to the uttermost, you
will have again that enterprise and that wealth
which was the heritage of India for thousands
of years."

1 began by saying that for the establishment of
Indian Local Government legislation is necessary.
The first voluntary effort made to accomplish it was,
I believe, that made in Bihar in 1904 or 1905; a
Panchayat Association was formed there, of which
I had the honour of being President. It did not
succeed, but started the idea. In 1916, at a Chittoor
District Conference, over which I presided, I urged on
the people the necessity of reviving the Village
Panchayat, the Taluk Panchayat, the District Council,
thus learning to administer successively larger areas
as a preparation for the Self -Government of India.

We shall see under Education and under Industries,
Chapters II and III, that the remedy for the present
state of both begins in the Village.

EDUCATION

(X\). ITS PAST

ONE of the most splendid pages of the Past of India,
if not the most splendid, since a Nation's conditions
depend upon it, is that on which are written the
records of its Education. These fall naturally into
three marked periods, Ancient, Middle and Modern
India, otherwise Vaidic, Buddhistic and Muslim. But
these periods signify types of Education, and histori-
cally are not mutually exclusive ; thus the Vaidic Period,
exclusively Hindu, runs on with Hindu Universities
through the Buddhist Period, in which we find Hindus
and Buddhists studying side by side in the same Bud-
dhist Universities ; the Hindu also continues through
the Muslim Period, but the latter is distinguished largely
by the culture of its Imperial Courts, recalling those of
Ancient and Early Middle India, and by its development
of history. We find in ail the three Periods a highly
developed University Education for the classes in which
deep learning was the object of life, and for those

EDUCATION 109

by which Government was carried on, the sons of
Brahmanas, of monarchs and nobles, and also of
wealthy members of the great merchant community,
the organizers of production and distribution : the sons
of the two latter classes were trained in the Univer-
sities in an understanding, not only of literature and
science, but also of arts and crafts, so that on their
return home they might intelligently examine and
supervise their practical carrying out by artists, crafts-
men and artisans, thus keeping up a high level of
production in the villages, as well as setting a good
example by attaching to their own courts or homes
artists of special skill or of inborn genius, who pro-
duced their works at leisure, amply provided with the
necessaries and comforts of life. We read how young
princes, returning from some great University of their
time, visited the village artificers to see that they were
keeping up to the required level of excellence. It is
also worthy of note that great religious Teachers of
high rank, such as the Rishi Narada, visited the courts
of Kings, not merely to give instructions or guidance
on high questions of policy, but also to enquire as to
the matters which concerned the efficiency and pros-
perity of those employed in manual work, e.g. asking
whether the artisans were properly supplied with the
materials for their labour. Under these circumstances
it was only natural that the Universities should train
sons of the " twice-born castes " in the Shilpashastras,

110 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

previously mentioned, the Scriptures of Arts and Crafts.

Let us then first turn to the brilliant story of higher
Education in India, the story of its Hindu, Buddhist and
Muslim Universities and Colleges, not forgetting the
Sartgams of the South.

The highest Hindu intellectual training was based on
the practice of yoga, and produced, as its fruit, those
marvellous philosophical systems, the six Darshanas and
the Brahma Sutras, which are still the delight of
scholars and the inspiration of Occultists and Mystics.
The home of that training began in the recesses of the
forests, wherein a great Sage would attract to his
Ashrama (dwelling) numbers of pupils, whose faculties
were there developed by the method of meditation,
the working out of an abstruse problem, set by the
teacher in a brief form, by intense and prolonged
concentration upon it. aided by a simple and well-
balanced and moderately ascetic life. This method of
instruction explains two specialties of the Forest
Ashrama : one was the huge numbers of pupils study-
ing under a single Sage ; a Sage was termed a Kula-
pati, lord of a family, when he fed and taught he
did not need to lodge 10,000 pupils. Later we note
that in some, at least, of the great Universities, the
number of students under one teacher was limited to
500. The second was the occasionally great length of
the student's life ; men would remain, studying and
meditating, till their hair had turned grey. And this

EDUCATION 111

was not confined to Forest Universities, for Professor
Cowell visiting the ancient University of Nadiya in
Bengal, founded in the eleventh century, A. D.
writes in 1 867 :

" I could not help looking at these unpretending
lecture halls with a deep interest, as I thought of
the pandits lecturing there to generation after
generation of eager inquisitive minds. Seated on
the floor with his ' corona ' of listening pupils round
him, the teacher expatiates on those refinements of
infinitesimal logic, which make a European's brain
dizzy to think of, but whose labyrinth a trained
Nadiya student will tread with unfaltering precision.
I noticed during my visit middle-aged and even
grey-haired men among the students."

Dr. Rabindranath Tagore has given us, in his Tapo-
vana, a profoundly sympathetic sketch of this early
stage of Indian learning :

" A most wonderful thing that we notice in An-
cient India is, that here the forest not the town, is
the fountain-head of all its civilization.

" Wherever, in India, its earliest and most won-
derful manifestations are noticed, we find that men
have not come into such close contact as to be
rolled or fused into a compact mass. There, trees
and plants, rivers and lakes, had ample opportunity
to live in close relationship with men.

" in these forests, though there was human
society, there was enough of open space, of aloof-
ness ; there was no jostling. Still, this aloofness did
not produce inertness in the Indian mind ; rather it
rendered it all the brighter, it is the forest that has.

312 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

nurtured the two great Ancient Ages of India, the
Vaidic and the Buddhistic.

"As did the Vaidic Rishis, Lord Buddha also
showered His teaching in many woods of India. The
royal palace had no room for Him ; it is the forest
that took Him into its lap. The current of civilisation
that flowed from its forests inundated the whole
of India.

" The very word ' aranyaka ' affixed to some of
the ancient treatises, indicates that they either origi-
nated in, or were intended to be studied in,
forests."

It is noteworthy that when the open-air forest
'Universities gave place to buildings, sites of Universities
were selected for the beauty of their natural surround-
ings, and they were also set in great gardens, and
spacious court-yards the University of Vikramashila
had one which held 8,000 persons added to the
open-air character of the whole. A high wall sur-
rounded such an abode, sometimes with only a single
-door, and a learned pandit was the door-keeper, who
put the would-be student through an examination, ere
he would open the door for his admission a literal
entrance examination, for the applicant could only
enter when he had argued in satisfactory fashion with
the door-keeper. I like to imagine a severe-looking
pandit, squatting on the top lintel, and putting his head
over the dosed door, as he tries to outwit the eager

EDUCATION 113

yet anxious lad below, being in a rather unfairly
superior position as he poses his questions.

The most ancient Hindu University, in the modern
sense of the word, was Takshashila (Takkashila or
Taxila), which was destroyed by the barbarian White
Huns in 455 A. D. How great its antiquity may be we
do not know, but light may be thrown on this question
as the excavations go on. It was situated some
twenty miles on the north-west of the present town
of Rawalpindi. Sir John Marshall, Director-General of
Archaeology in India, has given a most interesting
account of its unburying, but he says regretfully :

" The monuments of Taxila were wantonly and
ruthlessly devastated in the course of the same
[fifth] century. This work of destruction is almost
certainly to be attributed to the hordes of barbarian
White Huns, who, after the year 455 A.D., swept
down into India in ever-increasing numbers, carrying
sword and fire wherever they went, and not only
possessed themselves of the kingdom of the Kin-
shans, but eventually overthrew the great empire of
the Guptas. From this calamity Taxila never again
recovered."

Sir John Marshall published in 1921 a Guide to
7 axil a, but he can only give us the bones of the
wonderful University, whose life stretches far back
into Hindu history. In the Mahabharata we read that
King Janmajaya conquered its valley and made there
his great Snake Sacrifice ; it comes into ordinary history
only with its conquest by Persia B. C. 521. and by
8

114 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

Alexander of Greece, B. C. 326. The King of the
city makes submission to him, and we are toid that
it was then " very wealthy, prosperous and well-
governed/' and that its territory extended from the
Indus to the Hydaspes. It is thought from some traces
found in the excavations, that Apollonius of Tyana
visited the city during his travels.

Its site carries out the idea held by the ancient
Hindus of the value of natural beauty in the surround-
ings of a University. The valley is "a singularly
pleasant one, well-watered by the river Hard and its
tributaries, and protected by a girdle of hills." It
was situated on the great trade route, which in those
times connected India with Central and Western Asia,
and Hiouen-Tsang, in the seventh century A.D., eleven
hundred years later than the Persian conquest, found
the valley still growing rich harvests and well-watered,
but the University had perished two centuries earlier.

We can, however, reconstruct the outline of the
living University from the Buddhist Jatakas, wherein
we find no less than 1 05 references to it, showing how
teachers and students lived in Ancient India, and the
discipline imposed on the latter, sons of Kings and
themselves future rulers though they might be ! l

1 1 used in the sketch here given from my Convocation
Address to the Mysore University, 1924, the six-volume edition
" translated from the Pali by various hands under the editorship
of Professor E. V. Cowell," and published at various dates. The
numbers of the Jatakas are given, not the pages of the volumes,
so that the references may be found in other editions.

EDUCATION 115

Jataka (No. 252) thinks that this discipline was likely
" to quell their pride and haughtiness."

Professor Radhakumal Mookerji gives the following
pleasant account from this same Jataka as follows :

" Once on a time Brahmadatta, the King of
Benares, had a son named Prince Brahmadatta.
Now Kings of former times, though there might be
a famous teacher living in their own city, often used
to send their sons to foreign countries afar off to
complete their education, that by this means they
might learn ' to quell their pride and high-minded-
ness,' and endure heat or cold, and be made
acquainted with the ways of the world. So did this
King. Calling his boy to him now the lad was
sixteen years old he gave him one-soled sandals, a
sunshade of leaves, and a thousand pieces of money
with these words : .' My son, get you to Takkasita and
study there.'

" The boy obeyed. He bade his parents fare-
well, and in due course arrived at Takkasila. There
he inquired for the teacher's dwelling, and reached
it at a time when the teacher had finished his
lecture, and was walking up and down at the door
of the house. When the lad set eyes upon the
teacher, he loosed his shoes, cbsed his sunshade,
and, with a respectful greeting, stood still where he
was. The teacher saw that he was weary and wel-
comed the newcomer. The lad ate and rested a
little. Then he returned to the teacher and stood
respectfully by him.

" ' Where have you come from ? ' he asked.

" ' From Benares.'

" ' Whose son are you ? '

" ' I am the son of the King of Benares.'

116 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

" ' What brings you here ? '

" ' I come to learn/ replied the lad.

" ' Well, have you brought a teacher's fee, or
do you wish to attend on me in return for
teaching you ? '

" ' \ have brought a fee with me,' and with this
he laid at the teacher's feet his purse of a thousand
pieces.

" The resident pupils attend on their teacher by
day, and at night they learn of him ; but they who
bring a fee are treated like the eldest sons in his
house, and thus they learn. And this teacher, like
the rest, gave schooling to the Prince on every
light and lucky day. Thus the young Prince was
taught."

The learned Professor points out that :

" This extract introduces us practically to all the
principal features of the education of the times. To
go to Taxila is ' to complete their education.' The
appropriate age for the University was sixteen."

This age, as marking the beginning of the higher
Education, has persisted to our own time, though now
that a foreign Government controls Education, a later
age is laid down.

" The Prince of Benares is ... sent to Takkasila
for his studies with the modest equipment given him
by his own royal father of ' a pair of one-soled
sandals, a sunshade of leaves, and a thousand pieces
of money/ as his teacher's fees, of which not a
single pice could he retain for his private use Thus the

EDUCATION 117

Prince enters his school as a poor man, divested of
all riches."

The Professor says of the University :

" The fame of Takkasila (Taxila) as a seat of
learning was, of course, due to that of its teachers
They are always spoken of as being ' world-
renowned/ being authorities, specialists and experts
in the subjects they professed. It was the presence
of scholars of such acknowledged excellence and
widespread reputation that caused a steady move-
ment of qualified students drawn from all classes
and ranks of society towards Taxila from different
and distant parts of the Indian Continent, making it
the intellectual capital of the India of those days.
Thus the various centres of learning in the different
parts of the country became affiliated, as it were,
to the educational centre of the central University
of Taxila, which exercised a kind of intellectual suze-
rainty over the wide world of letters in India." (A
paper in the Vishva-Bharati Quarterly, October,
1923, p. 228.)

The sons of poor men who went as pupils helped
in the cutting of fuel and other domestic services, or
they promised to pay a fee later, either earning it, or
begging for it. So honoured was learning and so
valuable to the country that to beg for it was no
disgrace. Teachers less sought after taught without
fee, and as we shall see, there were Universities sup-
ported by gifts from Kings or the wealthy, where
teachers and pupils alike were boarded, fed and
clothed.

118 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

As Professor Cowell says, the Jatakas are " full of
interest as giving a vivid picture of the social life and
customs of Ancient India. . . . They form in fact an
ever-shifting panorama of the village life such as
Fa-Hien and Hiouen-Tsang saw it in the old days
before the Muhammadan Conquest, when Hindu
institutions and native rule prevailed in every Pro-
vince throughout the land." And what a wholesome,
industrious, prosperous life it was !

The journey from Benares to Takshasila was 2,000
leagues and dangerous when passing through a great
forest, inhabited by "ogresses," but this passage was
preferred, being half as long as the safe way round
(No. 96). A pupil is beaten for stealing sweets
(No. 353). "A world-famed teacher preached the
moral law to anyone that he might see. . . . But
though they received it, they kept it not " (No. 306).
Kshattriyas and Brahmanas " came from all India to be
taught the Arts " (No. 353), and one of these was
archery (No. 374). Prince Junha of Benares, being in
a hurry, accidentally knocked down a poor man and
broke his bowl ; he stopped and helped the man up,
who asked for the price of a meal as his bowl was
broken ; the Prince said he had no money, but when
he was King in K&shi he would pay, and the man
should come and claim his debt (No. 456). Outcastes
were not admitted ; but two who slipped in, disguised
as Brhmanas, were discovered by their use of bad

EDUCATION 119

language when, the rice being very hot, it burnt their
mouths ; they were beaten and driven away (No. 498).
Good manners even under strain, were evidently
insisted on. Professor Radhakumal mentions that
Takshasila had military, medical and law schools.

The extraordinary range of subjects taught in these
ancient Universities is amazing, and the more so when
we remember that a student was apparently expected,
in many cases, to know by heart the book he studied.
A Brahmana learning one, two, or three Vedas, had to
learn each by heart, and twelve years' study was
assigned to each. Pandit Vasudeva Sarvabhauma was
the Head of the great University of Nadiya, and it had
no college for the study of the Nyaya philosophy.
Only one copy of the text-book of Nyaya was extant,
and that was in the possession of the University of
Mithila. This University refused to allow a copy of the
book to be made, but Pandit Vasudeva was not
daunted. He went to Mithila as a student and
learnt the text-book by heart. Then, going back
to his own University, he opened a college for
Nyaya !

In the Chhandogyopanishat we are told that Ndrada
went to the Lord Sanat Kumara and asked for instruc-
tion. The Supreme Sage asked him what he already
knew, and Narada replied :

" O Lord, I have read the Rigveda, the Yajurveda,
the Samaveda, fourth the Atharveda, fifth the

120 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

Itihasa and Purana, Grammar, Rituals, the Sci-
ence of Numbers, Physics, Chronology, Logic,
Polity, Technology, the Sciences cognate to the
Vedas, the Science of Bhutas, Archery, Astronomy,
the Science of Antidotes and the Fine Arts." (These
are said by Shri Shankaracharya to be the Science
of making essences, dancing, singing, music, archi-
tecture, painting, etc.) " Unto him said Sanat
Kumara : ' All these that you have learnt are merely
nominal '."

The great University of Nadiya in Bengal was
founded about 1063 A.D. and still exists as a relic of
the Past. In 1908 it had thirty Toles (Colleges) with
250 pupils, and the Toles still maintained the old
custom of each teaching only a single subject.
Professor Cowell's visit to it in 1867 has been men-
tioned. Its old studies included the three (or perhaps
four) Vedas, the Vedangas, the six Darshanas, the
Purva and Uttara Mimamsa, Logic and Yoga. In the
days of its glory, it was a town the life of which was
devotion to learning. Mr. Shishir Kumar Ghose in his
work, Lord Gauranga Lord Gauranga was, as a youth,
a student at Nadiya, by name Nimai, and became later
famous as Chaitanya, regarded by many as a minor
Avatara, an incarnation of Divinity says :

" The intense devotion to learning by the majority
of the citizens of Navadwipa [Nadiya] gave a
peculiar character to the town, distinguishing it from
any other in the world. Students thronged every-
where. They filled the market-place, the streets,
the bathing ghats of the strand. They assembled

EDUCATION 12 1

in thousands in every convenient spot to hold
literary discussions. When the students walked in
the streets they talked on literary subjects. Literary
tournaments were held every day at every ghat of
the city. And so earnest were the combatants
that sometimes these tournaments ended in free
fights, and the defeated parties had to swim across
to the other bank of the river.

We must not omit to glance at a Southern Indian
Institution, the only analogue of which I know is the
modern literary body, the Academic Francaise. It was
called the Sangam, a Tamil variant of the Samskrit
Sangha. The word Sangharama is used for Buddhist
monasteries, all of which included also schools, or
colleges, or a University, the teaching being largely,
though by no means entirely, in the hands of the
monks, who were students as well as teachers.
Professor S. Krishnaswami Aiyangar, M.A., Ph.D., a
very high authority on ancient Tamilian institutions,
tells us that there were three famous Sangams of
Madura, each lasting through a long period of time ;
he writes :

" There are two features with regard to these
assemblies that call for special remark. The first,
the academies were standing bodies of the most
eminent among the learned men of the time in all
branches of knowledge. The next, it was the
approval of this learned body as a whole that set
the seal of authority on the works presented to it."
(The Calcutta Review. January, 1822, p. 43.)

122 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

This last point is my reason for comparing the
Madura Sangam to the Academic Francaise, for the
imprimatur of the " Forty Immortals " is regarded ail
over Europe as marking a book of exceptional merit.
The books which received the approval of the Indian
Sangam were known as " Sangam works," says our
author, who writes as to the word that

" it means ordinarily no more than an assembly. In
this particular application, however, it means a body
of scholars of recognised worth and standing in the
world of letters, who were maintained by the con-
temporary Kings, and constituted themselves a
board, before whom every work seeking recognition
had to be read. It is only when this body as a whole
signified its approval that the work could go forth
into the world as a Sangam work." (Some Contribu-
tions of South India to Indian Culture, pp. 9, 10.)

The highest honour given by the Madura Sangam
-was to tie a fillet round the head of some great
scholar, and to place him on a platform furnished with
poles, borne on the shoulders of learned men one of
the bearers sometimes a King and thus carrying him
in procession. Our Professor tells us that

" a Ruler of Tanjore, poet, musician, warrior, and
administrator, did extraordinary honour to a lady of
the Court, by name RSmachandramha, who composed
an epic *n the achievements of her patron, Raghu-
natha Nayaka of Tanjore. It appears she was a
poetess of extraordinary powers, who could com-
pose with equal facility in eight languages, and was
accorded the honour of Kanaka-Ratna Abhisheka

EDUCATION 123

(bath in gold and gems). She was. by assent of the
court, made to occupy the position of ' Emperor of
Learning ' ." (Calcutta Review, p. 49.)

In the Buddhist Period Nalanda holds the place that
Takshasila held in the Hindu. It was fully described
by Fa-Hien, living in India from 399 to 414 A.D. ; by
Hiouen-Tsang living there from 629 to 645 A.D., and
by l-Tsing from 673 to 693 A.D., who out of these
twenty years lived in Nalanda for ten. It was a great
Buddhist monastery, founded by Aryadeva on a spot
selected for its beauty on the banks of the sacred
river, Ganga. by his Guru, the famous NagSrjuna, and
built up to extraordinary splendour by four successive
Kings of Magadha. Mr. J. Talboys Wheeler wrote :

" The huge monastery was a vast University
towers, domes and pavilions stood amidst a paradise
of trees, gardens and fountains. . . . Ten thousand
Buddhist monks and novices were lodged and sup-
plied with every necessary. All the inmates were
lodged, boarded, taught, and supplied with vest-
ments without charge. They studied the sacred
books of all religions. In like manner, they studied
all the sciences, especially arithmetic and medicine."

Hiouen-Tsang writes enthusiastically of the splendour
of the architecture, the lakes of pure water covered
with the blue lotus, and the " lovely kanaka trees."
The library building had nine stories, and there were
a hundred lecture rooms. Dr. Macdonnell remarks
that in some subjects, " as Science, Phonetics, Gram-
mar, Mathematics, Anatomy, Medicine and Law, the

124 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

attainment of Indians was far in advance of what was
achieved by the Greeks." (Quoted by Rao Sahab
R. Krishna Rao Bhonsle, in South Indian Research,
Jan., 1922.) Mr. Romesh Chandra Dutt, in his Civilisa-
tion in Ancient India, p. 127, writes :

" Buddhism had never assumed a hostile attitude
towards the parent religion of India ; and the fact
that the two religions existed side by side for long
centuries increased their toleration of each other. In
every country Buddhists and orthodox Hindus lived
side by side. Hindus went to Buddhist monasteries
and Universities, and Buddhists learned from Brah-
mana Sages. The same Kings favoured the followers
of both religions. The Gupta Emperors were often
worshippers of Shiva and Vishnu, but loaded Bud-
dhists and Buddhist monasteries with gifts, presents
and favours. One King was often a Buddhist and
his son an orthodox Hindu ; and often two brothers
followed or favoured the two religions without fight-
ing. Every Court had learned men belonging to
both the religions, and Vikramaditya's Court was no
exception to the rule."

Mr. Dutt quotes Dr. Ferguson as justly remarking
that

" what Cluny and Clairvaux were to France in the
Middle Ages, Nalanda was to Central India, the
depository of true learning, the centre from which
it spread over to other lands. . . . Medicine ap-
pears to have made great progress in the Buddhist
Age, when hospitals were established all over the
country. The great writers on Hindu medicine,
Charaka and Sushruta, lived and wrote in t % .e Bud-
dhist Age. but their works seemed to have been

EDUCATION 125

recast in the Pauranic Age (p. 123), But it was in
Astronomy that the most brilliant results were
achieved in the Buddhist Age. We have seen
before that astronomical observations were made
as early as the Vaidic Age ; and that early in the
Epic Age the lunar zodiac was fixed, the position of
the solstitial points marked, and other phenomena
carefully observed and noted (p. 119)."

In the seventh century, the life of Nalanda seems
to be deteriorating, if one may judge by l-Tsing's
" laborious and minute work " very tedious also, if
one may venture to say so. I wrote on it elsewhere,
that no one could read it

" without recognising that little attention was paid
to the Lord Buddha's perfect Ethics and His superb
Philosophy. l-Tsing's account is all about minute
and mostly unimportant sittings and walkings and
gestures. There is no life, no inspiration."

During the next century, Nalanda's place was largely
taken by the Royal University of Vikramashila, which
flourished for four centuries, and perished, with those
of Nalanda and Odantapuri in the Muslim invasion of
1199. Two others were destroyed four years later,
in the Muslim invasion of 1 203.

in considering the destructive raids of the Muslims
on these seats of learning, it is only fair to remember
that even so fierce an assailant as Mahmud of Ghazni
was a patron of learning in his own country. He had
a fanatical horror of images, and as both Hindu and
Buddhist Universities had Temples in their great

126 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

gardens, containing images of Devas and of the Lord
Buddha, and the country schools were also attached
to Temples, these would share in the destruction
launched against all " idols." The Musalman, like
the Hebrew, admits no images, whether of men or
Devas in his architecture, and like the Puritan of
the seventeenth century in Britain, he ruthlessly de*
stroyed buildings which included them. And as, to
him, learning was no excuse for " idolatry," he in-
cluded monks and scholars in his wild rage.

After settling in Northern India for some time, this
rage subsided, and Sultan Firuz, in the fourteenth
century, began to tread a wiser way. He says :

" Among the gifts which God has bestowed upon
me, His humble servant, was a desire to erect public
buildings. So I built many Musjids (Mosques),
colleges and monasteries, that the learned and the
elders, the devout and the holy, might worship God
in these edifices, and aid the kind builder by their
prayers."

The chief authority on Muslim Education in India
is Narendranath Law, whose monograph, Promotion
of Learning in India During Muhammadan Rule (by
Muhammad a ns) is a most useful and interesting work.
He gives a pleasant description of the Madrasah
(College) built by Sultan Firuz :

11 The Madrasah was a very commodious building
embellished with lofty domes and situated in an
extensive garden, adorned with alleys and avenues,

EDUCATION 127

and all that human art combined with nature could
contribute to make the place fit for meditation. An
adjacent tank mirrored in its shiny and placid breast
a high and massive house of study, standing on its
brink. What a charming sight was it when the
Madrasah hummed with hundreds of busy students,
walking its clean and smooth floors, diverting them-
selves on the side of the tank, or listening in atten-
tive masses to the learned lectures of the professors
from their respective seats." (Loc. c/t., p. 60.)

A useful survival of Hindu-Buddhist methods was
found at the Firuz-Shahi Madrasah, in the common
life of professors and students, who all lived within
the Madrasah itself, and each received a daily allow-
ance for his maintenance. There was a large Masjid, in
which the five regular hours of prayer were observed,
and it is interesting to note that Sufis conducted
the regular compulsory prayers, so that they were
evidently not then regarded as heretical. Travellers
from distant countries also found hospitality there, and
the poor and needy received charity.

Mr. Law also mentions that many small Muslim
kingdoms sprang up in different parts of India, and
that each contributed to the general progress of
Islamic learning, some being specially notable as
centres, such as Jaunpur under its famous king r
Ibrahim Shargi. His daughter-in-law also built a
Masjid, a College and a Monastery, and gave stipends
to professors and students, and it is recorded that
this institution had hundreds of subordinate ones.

128 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

where also both professors and students were given
stipends, "that they might devote themselves to
earning in complete freedom from material needs and
anxieties."

An outstanding lover of learning and pattern of
toleration was the great Akbar (A.D. 1566-1605), who
in the period in which Catholic Mary burnt Protest-
ants alive and Protestant Elizabeth crushed Catho-
lics to death under heavy stones held weekly dis-
cussions, in which " Sufis, doctors, preachers, lawyers,
Sunnis, Shias, Brahmanas, Jains, Buddhists, Charvakas,
Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, and learned men of
every belief " argued on " profound points of science,
the curiosities of history, the wonders of nature."
Many translations into Persian were also made from
Hindu Sacred Books, and Hindus and Muslims studied
in the same schools.

Such was Education in India under Indian Rule,
whether Hindu, Buddhist or Muslim. When that great
bird of prey, the East India Company, winged its way
eastward and descended on her land, ravaging and
destroying, filling itself fat with ill-gotten spoil. Educa-
tion naturally shared in the general ruin. Nearly a
century after the Battle of Plassey, Sir Charles Wood
(in 1 854) by making .a foreign tongue the medium of
education/ deait the coup de grace to village education,
the most potent creator of her wealth, the most vital
element of her civilization.

EDUCATION 129

For the great Universities so inadequately described
for want of space, given part of a chapter in a small
book were by no means the only glories of Education
in India. To these, boys could be admitted, as said
above, only after they had reached the age of sixteen,
after their school education was over. In the very
small villages the Temple priest acted also as school-
master ; the larger villages, like the towns, had also
the Tole or the Madrasah, giving higher school educa-
tion. Education began at five or six, and was
continued in the village Toles and Madrasahs till the
age of sixteen, at which it concluded, so far as its
literary side was concerned. Apprenticeship to one or
other of the skilled village trades must have run side
by side with the later years of this. We have seen
that every village had its school, and this meant that
the whole country was educated, and explains how the
East India Company obtained its scribes and account-
ants from the villages. The Village System had, in the
course of ages, become a singularly perfect economic
institution, with its various organs sustaining the com-
mon life. It was a body, an individual, organized for
a rich and healthy life. It is
agony, for its education
industries have been
in its land has been des
Chapter I) ; all that is left
cannot live on food alone.
9

130 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

tools, education, amusements. We Have seen " The
Present/' as it affects the Village as a whole. Let us
now watch the dissolution of its Education, the coming
of the night of ignorance, where Light had once
shone.

(B).-THE PRESENT

India, once known over the world for her Education,
whose Universities drew students from Europe to
Asia, is now regarded as the most illiterate of
civilised countries, with the possible exception of
Russia.

This is not her fault.

Mr. Gokhale, whose figures were dreaded by Indian
officials because they could not deny their accuracy,
and he used them with deadly effect in his attacks on
British Rule, collected, in his efforts to obtain education
for his fellow-countrymen, the following figures on the
sums spent on education abroad :

" 16s. per head in the United States. In Switzer-
land, 13s. 8d. per head. In Australia, 11s. 3d. In
England and. Wales, 10s. In Canada, 9s. 9d. In
, Scotland, ' ^s! 7$d. In Germany, 6s. 10d. In Ireland,
6s. 5d. In the Netherlands, 6s. 4d. In Sweden,
5s. 7d. In Belgium, Ss. 4d. In Norway, 5s. Id.
In France, 4s. 10d. In Austria, 3s. 1 Jd. In Spain,
1s. 10d. In Italy, 1s.7Jd. In Servia and Japan, 1s. 2d.
In Russia, 7$d, and in India barely 1d."

EDUCATION 131

In these figures lies the explanation of the change
from what she was, of which the following samples
may serve as evidence.

Mr. Keir Hardie's book, India, says :

" Max Muller, on the strength of official docu-
ments and a Missionary Report concerning Educa-
tion in Bengal prior to the British occupation, asserts
that there were then 80,000 native schools in
Bengal, or I to every 400 of the population. Ludlow,
in his History of British India, says that ' In every
Hindu village which has retained its old form, I am
assured that the children generally are able to read,
write and cipher, but where we have swept away
the Village System, as in Bengal, there the village
school has also disappeared.' That, I think, disposes
effectively of the boast that we are beginning to
give education to the people of India."

The Court of Directors of the East India Company,
in an exceptional moment surely, on June 3, 1814,
stated in a despatch, referring to Village Communities
and their schools :

" This venerable and benevolent institution of the
Hindus is represented as having withstood the shock
of revolutions, and to its operation is ascribed the
general intelligence of the natives as scribes and
accountants. We are so strongly persuaded of its
great utility that we are desirous you should take
early measures to inform yourselves of its present
state and that you will report to us the result of your
enquiries, affording in the meantime the protection
of Government to the village teachers in ail their
just rights and immunities, and marking, by some

132 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

favourable distinction, any individual amongst them 1
who may be recommended by superior merit or
acquirements ; for, humble as their situation may
appear, if judged by a comparison with any corres-
ponding character in this country, we understand
these village teachers are held in great veneration
thoughout India." (Quoted by Mr. Matthai, loc.
c/t., p. 43.)

It would have been difficult to find " in this
country " any " corresponding character," since, at
the time of this despatch, English villagers were
notoriously ignorant of writing, there not being in
every village a schoolmaster. However, three years
later, the East India Company, the lucid moment
having passed, destroyed the Village System in which
the village schoolmaster had his place. The culti-
vators who had had shares in the common land were
turned into rent-paying peasants by a tax on their
holdings, and could not afford to pay a schoolmaster
in their impoverished condition ; so, very few schools
survived. Now, in 1926, a child, whose parents wish
to have htm educated, may have to walk in the
morning seven miles to the nearest school, and seven
miles back in the evening a somewhat heavy addition
to the day's work.

The crimes of the East India Company were many
and grievous ; but perhaps of them all, this light-
hearted destruction of India's Village System, by
plunging a rich and educated country into frightful

EDUCATION 133

poverty and into illiteracy, must be held to be the
blackest.

Mr. John Matthai, in his Village Administration in
British India (Chap. II, p. 42), says :

"It is obvious that when the British took posses-
sion of the country, in the different Provinces they
found that, though in most parts of the country
except Western and Central India, there existed a
widespread system of National Education, so far as
they could trace, the position of the schoolmaster
had in many cases changed from that of a village
servant with a defined position in the community
into that of a casual worker honoured in the village
by reason of his sacred calling, but not sufficiently
identified with the village to hold his ancient place
on the village staff. This statement is true in the
main, but nevertheless there were various traces left
which pointed to the original connection of the
schoolmaster with the village economy."

One other corroboration of the general education
prevailing in the country may be quoted with the
unimpeachable authority of the Encyclopaedia Britan-
nica behind it (see under " India," p. 384, column 1)*

"At no period of its history has India been an
altogether unenlightened country. The origin of the
Devanagari alphabet is lost in antiquity, though that
is generally admitted not to be of indigenous inven-
tion. Inscriptions on stone and copper, the palm-
leaf records of the temples, and, in later days, the
widespread manufacture of paper, all alike indicate,
not only the general knowledge, but also the
common use of the art of writing. From the earliest

134 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

times the caste of Brahmanas has preserved, by
oral tradition as well as in MSS., 'a literature un-
rivalled alike in its antiquity and in the intellectual
subtlety of its contents. The Muhammadan invaders
introduced the profession of the historian, which
reached a high degree of excellence, even as com-
pared with contemporary Europe. Through all
changes of Government vernacular instruction in its
simplest form has always been given, at least to the
children of respectable classes, in every large
village. On the one hand the Toies, or seminaries
for teaching Samskrit philosophy at Benares and
Nadiya, recall the schools of Athens and Alexandria ;
on the other, the importance attached to instruction
in accounts reminds us of the picture which Horace
has left of Roman education, Even of the present
day, knowledge of reading and writing is, owing to
the teaching of Buddhist monks, as widely diffused
throughout Burma as it is in some countries of
Europe. English efforts to stimulate education have
ever been most successful when based upon the
existing indigenous institutions."

The change has come quickly, for a generation or
two, left uneducated, present a picture t>f illiteracy.
Yet evidently some struggle was made to retain
knowledge, for Mr. Adams, in an enquiry into the
number of Hindu and Musalmdn schools in the Bengal
Presidency, 1835-1838, reported that there were Toles
and Madrasahs " in all the larger villages as in the
towns." " The curriculum/' he said, " included
reading, writing, the composition of letters, element-
ary arithmetic and accounts, either commercial or

EDUCATION

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136 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

agricultural or both." How rapidly Muhammadan educa-
tion is decreasing appears in the Quinquennial Review
for 1907 to 1912. In 1907, there were 10,504
"Quran" schools as compared with 8,288 in 1912;
in 1907, there were 2,051 Arabic and Persian
schools, as compared with 1,446 such schools
in 1912.

The Great Universities reacted on the villages, for
we have seen that Princes having finished their
Education in these, visited the Villages in order to see
that the artificers kept up to the traditional level in
their artistic work.

The present state of Education is the more poignant
because of its terrible contrast with the glorious Past.
Statistics are said to be dry, but they are the strongest
argument in this case for Indian control over the Indian
land. Let me put the figures bluntly, for they are
their own strongest indictment of British Rule where
Education is concerned. (Education, as a subject is,
since 1921, under an Indian Minister, but he is restrict-
ed by the inadequacy of the funds allowed to him
and cannot recast the system until the whole Govern-
ment is Indian.) But, in their very first Provincial
Councils, the members passed a measure for Free
Education in seven Provinces out of eight or out of
nine, if Delhi be counted as a Province and in four
of these Compulsory Education was also passed; in
the other three, compulsion was to be introduced as

EDUCATION 137

soon as possible without dislocating labour, child labour
being so largely employed.

Such is the state of Education in India after 167
years of the blessings of British Rule. Perhaps, without
over-harsh criticism, one may say that, as regards
Education, British Rule is inefficient.

In the Indian States the figures are very different,
approaching more nearly the old level. In Baroda,
Education is Free and to a great extent Compulsory,
all boys going to school. In Travancore 81 per cent
of boys and 33 per cent of girls are at school. In
Mysore 46 per cent of boys, but only 10 per cent
of girls.

This is what England has done for Education in India.
India's patriots have done what they could to induce the
Indian Government to spread Education. Mr. Gokhale
pleaded for popular education, but was met with the
answer, " No money." There was money enough for
the Army : the ever-rising military expenditure was
never checked for want of money ; against that no
argument as to the poverty of the people availed.
The extravagant expenditure on British soldiers was
never restricted for want of money, but popular Edu-
cation was evidently regarded as a mere fad of the
" natives." Moreover it was dangerous. England
had discovered by her own experience that as " the
working classes " became educated, they interfered
more and more in political affairs, and were more and

138 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

more impatient about the existence of a highly privi-
leged class, talked of land nationalisation, of shifting the
heavy burden of taxation to shoulders more able to
bear it, and of other dangerous changes. Could then
anyone in his senses wish to see the manual workers
of India educated? In the small number of the
educated Intelligentsia lay the safety of the alien Rule.
But even that small number was too many for Lord
Curzon, while Viceroy of India. Indian lads have a
passion for education, and little as they know of their
own Past, their inborn craving for education is uncon-
querable. Of this I have had a large personal experi-
ence as President of the Governing Body of the
Central Hindu College and School for eighteen years,
and later of the Theosophical Educational Trust. I
have known boys walk literally hundreds of miles, beg-
ging their way, to reach the above School, and to all
arguments as to " no room," " we cannot take more
free scholars," such a one would only answer:
" Mother, you must teach me." The old traditions
still hold of the right of the boy to education. Lord
Curzon 's Universities' Act of 1904 was designed to
increase the control of Universities by the Government
and also the cost of University Education. It aroused
the bitterest opposition, and his name is still hated in
India because of it, for scholarship and wealth have
not been generally united in the India of the Past.
Long before Lord Curzon had struck his blew at

EDUCATION 139

University Education and closed it to large numbers of
the class with whom learning was a traditional right,
we have seen that Sir Charles Wood, just fifty years
before the University Act, had made popular education
impossible by making English, a foreign tongue, the
medium of instruction in schools. He also invented a
new type of University, which destroyed it as a Temple
of Learning, and made it into a mere examining body.
Such were the eccentricities of modern foreiga
officials, pitchforked into the Government of an ancient
and civilized people, of whose traditions they were
utterly ignorant, Some of them meant well, doubtless,
but the proverb proved to be true, that " hell is paved
with good intentions."

Sir Charles Wood's curious experiment of educating
the professional classes in a foreign tongue as though-
Eton and Harrow boys were taught exclusively in-
German not only tended to de-nationalize them, but
closed to them the history of their own country ; for
its history, as taught in the Government Schools, was
written by an Englishman, leaving them to grow up
ignorant of the fact that they were heirs of a Past un-
paralleled in history ; it also offered them knowledge
which they could not assimilate, because they were
struggling to follow the language while they should
have been grasping the facts. Their only resource
was to utilise their extraordinary power of memorising
by learning text-books by heart and reproducing them.

140 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

in the examination-room. We hear sneers about
" Ba"bu English, " when a young man writes an applica-
tion for employment in the language of Addison ; but
the critic forgets that his Nation is responsible for the
peculiar " education " imparted to the youth.

A still more serious injury was done to the Indian
people by imposing " English Education " in a muti-
lated form ; for it was devoid of the religious and
moral training, which in England formed an essential
part of it. The " English-educated " were practically
left without religion or ethics during the most impres-
sionable period of their youth, and materialism conse-
quently spread over the land ; the home was fortu-
nately kept free from it, for the women of India
were untouched ; but a dangerous gulf was dug for
boys and men between the home life and the outside
one ; the husband could no longer be his wife's true
companion in her religious life, and her religion, full
of devotion, largely lost the elevating effect of know-
ledge ; for the husband was ignorant of his ancestral
faith, and the religion of the home became a matter
of ceremonial, while the meaning and use of this were
no longer understood. The son, studying in an
English school and college, was less careful than the
father in avoiding injury to the feelings of his feminine
relatives, and distressed them by questions they could
not answer and by indifference to that which was
dearest to their hearts. Hence the delight with which

EDUCATION 14T

they welcomed the Central Hindu School and College,
and the gifts of Indian women formed no mean portion
of its income.

One good thing, however, English Education has
done, though its good results were unintended and
were by no means welcome when they appeared. It
gave to Indian youth the history of England, with its
struggles for Liberty, its revolutions, its literature,
full of inspiration for Freedom ; it gave India Milton,
Byron and Shelley ; it taught how the American Colo-
nies became the American Republic. English-educated
India, small in numbers, caught the infection of English
patriotism, learned to admire England as the citadel of
Freedom, and rejoiced to hear how that little Island
became the refuge of Kossuth, of Mazzini, of Russian
Terrorists, to read how Garibaldi, the Liberator of Italy,
was welcomed in London as he passed through streets
packed with crowds, shouting their delight that Bomba's
tyranny was overthrown, mad with enthusiasm for the
red-shirted soldier who had set his country free.
Strange that a Nation, which was ruling autocratically
over another People, should thus dig the grave of its
own despotism. Out of all the plundering merchants
who had swept into India and fought out their
quarrels on her soil, that one was chosen as her tem-
porary Sovereign under whose rule, as 1 once pointed
out, India's Freedom, her winning back Self-Rule
" was inevitable." English Education was to awaken

142 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

India to a sense of her own humiliation. It was the
destined destroyer of her subjection.

I once more quote what I have written elsewhere
of the mixed results of English Education in India :

"When Macaulay urged English Education, he
was looking down with contempt on the great litera-
ture of India, and did not realise that, in pressing
English Education, he was condemning to ignorance
the great masses of the people. Instead of bread
he offered a stone. Boys were brought up without
any knowledge of the Classics of their country. They
could declaim in English, but not in their mother-
tongue. There is no subtler way of denationalizing
a country than to make the language of the upper
classes, of the Law and the Courts, of the Colleges,
a foreign tongue, and to require a knowledge of the
foreign tongue for Government Service. The Brah-
manas took advantage of these conditions and
crowded the Law Colleges, the Medical Colleges,
the Secretariat. The higher class Non-Brahmanas,
landlords and merchants chiefly, learnt their own
language, but, with the Muslims, did not trouble
themselves much with the foreign tongue. Hence
they became technically ' backward classes/ and
have only lately begun to covet Government ap-
pointments."

Let me remark here that it is interesting to note
that England largely, though not entirely, followed in
her educational policy that of Russia in Poland. The
Polish language was forbidden in schools, and Russian
was the language employed just as English is employed
here. Autocracies of all Nations must resemble each
other.

EDUCATION 143

" Yet English Education did just what was wanted
corrected India's excessive deference for ' lawful
authority ' ; its literary masterpieces in defence of
Liberty, in denunciation of tyranny, added to the
persistent harping of their teachers on the blessings
of British Rule, led to the re-awakening of the ' in
eradicable love of Liberty of the Aryan peoples,'
and of a desire to have the blessings of British Rule
by sharing in it themselves. Thus came into exist-
ence the ' educated Indians,' the now detested
' Intelligentsia,' a small minority, but the hope of
their country. And those who hate them and
denounce them do not realise that, for Indians, they
are not a separate class ; they are closely tied up
with the village folk, the villagers are closely related
to them ; what the Intelligentsia think today, the
villagers think the day after tomorrow. Hunger
is a severe but effective schoolmaster, and the
villagers have long memories of what their forebears
were before the village freedom was destroyed, and
the village schoolmasters disappeared."

And hunger is increasing, as we have seen.

(Q. THE REMEDY

Once more we must look to our village as the basic
element in the remedy for the present state of Edu-
cation. As will be seen by turning to Chapters IV and
V, " The Awakening of India " and " Home Rule for
India," the Commonwealth of India Bill places Education
in the hands of the Panchayat, the Sabha, the Samiti
and the Provincial Legislative Council. The Village

144 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

Panchayat controls Primary Education and Village
Workshops and Libraries. The Taluka Sabha controls
Lower Scondary or Middle Schools and Model Farms.
The District Samiti controls Higher Secondary or High
Schools and Colleges, Technical Colleges and a Techni-
cal Institute (for the study of soils, manures, crops,
etc.). The Provincial Legistative Council, Universities,
Technical Institute (including research, agricultural edu-
cation, protection against destructive insects, pests,
plant diseases), Libraries, Museums, and Zoological
Gardens.

It will be observed that Literary, Arts and Crafts,
and Technical Schools and Colleges run side by side
all the way up. That is, the scheme provides for a
good general education, but also trains eye and hand
and, later, branches of scientific and technical equip-
ment along specialised lines.

Objection is raised to the cost of education. Of
course, if a Government insists on brick buildings, and
tables and benches and expensive apparatus and
blackboards and slates, etc., etc., the expense is
crushing. But our Village Panchayat will do nothing
so foolish. Most of the year the children can have
their classes in the open air, as they do now in our
village schools (unless we want Government grants).
In the rainy season a shed of bamboo-supports and
palm-leaf thatch suffices. They learn writing by-
smoothing out sand and making letters with a pointed

'THE INDIAN VILLAGE 145

stick. They learn the multiplication table by heart
up to 20 x 20. They sit on the ground, much
more comfortable than if they sat on a bench, with
their little legs dangling. They sit on the ground at
home, why not at school ?

With this there must be manual training, Montessori
for the little ones, carpentry, spinning, weaving, agri-
culture, for older students. The carpenter's shop
makes the apparatus for the small people ; the spinners
and weavers make cloths ; vegetable and flower
gardens lead up to agriculture. Geography is taught
by clay and sand models, beginning with the school
building, marking out houses, roads, well, temple, etc.
History by stories. Religion and morals are taught
first by stories, and above all by example, and by help-
ing each other in little acts of service. The Scout
movement supplements the school classes, and both
make the future good citizen. Up to seven years of
age we train the senses chiefly, and see that every
child has enough simple and suitable food ; from seven
to fourteen the emotions chiefly ; after fourteen hard
mental study and plenty of team games. I am not
speaking .here from theory, but from twenty-eight
years of practice in India.

The useful Madras Bulletin of Co-operation tells us

of Japanese education (Japan has village, sub-district

and district elected councils) ; that in 1904 Japan had

27,138 primary schools, with 108,000 teachers and

10

146 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

above 5,000,000 pupils ; in the higher primary lessons
are given on plants and animals, bearing on agriculture,
horticulture, and local industries. After this come
the secondary schools, agriculture taught practically,
" chemistry and physics, diseases and pests affecting
the crops " ; the normal schools have a four years'
course of agriculture and " a full year of special agri-
cultural work in the College of Agriculture in Tokio."
Experimental and demonstration farms were being
established.

All this is very encouraging, when we see that the
Japanese have a local government such as we are
striving for here, and also that they are eastern people.
A Government of India note says of the Indian peasant :

" Owing partly to historical causes and partly to
the fearful struggle that has to be carried on with
nature in many parts of India, the Indian cultivator
has, as a rule, developed into the most patient,
hard-working and in many cases skilful agriculturist
that can be found on the face of the earth."

After all, history tells us of him for thousands of
years, and he was only entirely deprived of his free-
dom and his communal system of land-holding a
century and a decade ago. The memory of it remains.
It is capable of revival.

In the Secondary Schools, the vernacular should be
the sole medium of instruction, so that the students
can follow the language through which knowledge is

THE INDIAN VILLAGE 147

communicated to them. English should be taught as
a second language. It should be taught at first by
conversation and then modern English stones, and
poems, and simply and graphically written English
history ; the high schools should have for reading,
essays by the best writers, writers of exquisite prose
such as Ruskin, of inspiring ideals, such as Emerson,
histories, great poems, biographies of really great
men, not of admirals and generals of foreign Nations.

With full command of modern English, with taste
formed, and interest aroused, they will be ready for
the intelligent study of the great masterpieces of
English literature of the sixteenth, seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries.

What after all is the object of Education ? To train
the body in health, vigour and grace, so that it may
express the emotions in beauty and the mind with
accuracy and strength. To train the emotions to love
all that is noble and beautiful ; to sympathise with the
joys and sorrows of others ; to inspire to service ever
widening in its area, until we love our elders as our
parents, our equals as our brothers and sisters, our
youngers as our children, and seek to serve them all ;
to find joy in sacrifice for great causes and for the
helpless ; to feel reverence for all who are worthy of
it, and compassion for the outcast and the criminal.
To evolve and discipline the mind in right thinking,
right discrimination, right judgment, right memory.

148 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

To subdue body, emotion, and mind to the Spirit,
the Inner Ruler Immortal, making the mind the mirror
of the Ego, the emotions the mirror of the Intuition,
the body the expression of the Will.

To put all this in a single sentence : To make the
man a good Citizen of a free and spiritual Common-
wealth of Humanity.

Ill

INDUSTRIES

(A). THEIR PAST

WE have seen that India was, and still is, a country
of villages, not of towns. We have also seen that the
sons of the learned, the royal, the noble, and the
wealthy merchant classes, " the twice-born," highly
trained in the Universities, were there instructed in the
Fine Arts and Crafts, and that they visited the villages,
whence their wealth was drawn, utilising their know-
ledge for the inspection of the Village Industries, thus
maintaining the high level of the craftsmen, while they
also drew to their palaces or their homes artists of
genius, maintaining them freely and leaving them the
fullest liberty to produce their works at their own time
and in their own way, being content to reap their own
reward in the fame and the glory which accrued to
them from the presence of such men of artistic genius
in their Courts or in their homes.

I mentioned in the Introduction the large and
lucrative trade of India with foreign countries, noting

150 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

that whenever foreign visitors left records of their
observations, they wrote of the wealth of articles
produced by her craftsmen, and her great export
trade, bringing streams of gold into the country,
enriching her merchants. We saw that it was this
trade with Babylon, Nineveh, Egypt, Persia, Greece
and Rome and continuing in Europe and the Far East
down to the seventeenth century A.D., that drew to
her the trading companies of Europe and reduced her
to poverty. On this there is no question possible ;
hence we can deal very shortly with this part of our
subject.

These companies obtained charters from their
respective monarchs to plunder India, and none of
them made any pretence that they went to India for
her salvation, to lift her out of chaos, and give her the
blessings of peace and order see Lord Sydenham's
articles passim. They were quite frank as to their
object, and if proof were needed the despatches of
the East India Company to their representatives in
India may suffice. They came to " shake the pagoda-
tree/' a vegetable that has become quite barren now.
And as India was a country of villages, they sought
the splendid products of village looms and exported
them, to reap enormous profits. When these began
to fail by the destruction of the village system, they
built large factories and employed cheap labour. This
was the " absentee capitalism " like the " absentee

INDUSTRIES 151

landlordism " of Ireland whereof Gokhale spoke,
when President of the National Congress of 1906, as
draining the land of wealth, declaring that in the pre-
ceding forty years it had amounted, including treasure,
" to no less than a thousand millions sterling." We
shall come presently to the means employed.

I wrote elsewhere in dealing with this modern
flight of locusts of which it might be said that " the
land was as the Garden of Eden before them, and
behind them a desolate wilderness :

" They came to a land overflowing with gold and
silver brocades, carpets of silk and gold, tufts of
gold for turbans, golden network. An Emperor had
a throne of the estimated value of 6,500,000.
There were works of art of every description,
muslins wonderful for fineness, as well as the
calicoes, so valued in England. The huge fortunes
obtained by men like Clive, who ' wondered at my
moderation/ all told of a country wealthy beyond
compare, and wealthy with her own constantly
manufactured articles, ever renewed and replaced
as they were exported. And we can trace this
continuous wealth back and back for millennia.
India was never fdund poor until she reached the
nineteenth century A.D. (The latter half of the
eighteenth century would be more exact, as the
process took time.) As Phillimore wrote in the
middle of the eighteenth century, ' the droppings
of her soil fed distant regions/ while she clothed in
gorgeous garments the Doges of Venice, the great
nobles of Italy, the Monarch* of Europe, century
after century, Look back over the evidence of trav-
ellers who recorded what they had found. Travellers

152 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

in the sixteenth, fifteenth and fourteenth centuries,
mention with admiration her manufactures, her
trade and the fertility of her soil under irrigation, in
some parts yielding three crops a year. At the end
of the thirteenth century, Marco Polo records a
similar story : indigo, pepper, ginger, cotton, surplus
rice were exported, as were buckrams, fine in quality,
leather goods, beautiful mats. Similar testimony is
found back and back, and Pliny in the first century
speaks of the great trade of Rome with India, Arabia
and China, and the wares being sold at a hundred
times their cost."

We learn from Bernier, in the seventeenth century,
that one Bengal village, Kasimhazar, was exporting
annually 2,200.000 Ibs. (of 16 ozs. to the Ib., notes
a writer) of silken goods. The old skill has not wholly
disappeared, though now rare. Even now in Benares,
we may watch a weaver in a little hut, large enough
to contain his loom and himself, producing one of the
exquisite silken fabrics for which that city of immem-
orial antiquity is famous. Or we may listen in Masuli-
patam, in Southern India, as a man chants an ancient
melody, and several weavers, with threads of various
hues, reproduce the nbtes he sings in a harmoniously
hued pattern for a coat of many colours.

There are still a few centres of highly skilled work,
as in Benares and Masulipatam. When the Queen-
Empress visited Benares she bought many of its still
wonderful products ; golden scarves now called
Queen Mary's scao/es others coloured, but with

INDUSTRIES 153

glimmering sheen of gold shining amid the colour ; saris
with borders of golden work woven in literal gold,
which keeps its threads bright under many washings
through many years, not the imported " gold thread "
which soon loses its brilliance. These hand-woven
fabrics last for years, and remain beautiful. In far
Kashmir shawls are still made of exquisite colours, the
shades so delicate and so marvellously graded that we
cannot see a dividing line with European eyes, though
at one part the colour is deep and after awhile light ;
saris warm and soft, but so fine that they will pass
through a woman's ring. The best kinds are dying
out, as the old purchasers of such goods can no longer
afford to buy them, or in some cases, I fear, men of
wealth or young Princes prefer to gamble on horse-
races and other western delights, rather than to sup-
port the arts of their native land.

A few other places remain, bearing witness to the
splendour of the Past, but they too are lessening in
number. Many of the Industries perished with the
Education, which the villagers could not support when
the Village System was destroyed, and the Village
Community no longer owned the land on which it
lived, and on which it carried on its varied inter-
dependent occupations, agricultural and industrial.

As Europeans are fond of writing about the con-
tinual wars in India causing insecurity and poverty, it is
well to point out, as previously stated, that the fighting

154 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

in Aryan India was confined to the military caste, and
travellers have noted and recorded this fact. "The
villages, as the sources of wealth, were respected*
The invaders from the countries north of the Indian
boundaries were sometimes devastators, like the
White Huns, but more often carried off with them on
their return home only the most easily portable
plunder, like jewels, of which astonishing amounts are
said to have been annexed. But the loss of jewels
does not seriously impoverish a country depending
for its food on home-grown crops, and for other
necessaries and for trade on its " unrivalled skill in
manufacture," of which Sir Thomas Munro spoke in
1813. The early Musalman invasions destroyed
Temples and Monasteries and slaughtered their in-
habitants learned men and scholars and probably
killed many who resisted ; but the area they covered
was proportionately small, and Mr. Matthai relates how
the inhabitants of a devastated village would return
and rebuild their houses and take up again their
avocations. In the late War, the parts of Belgium and
France invaded and occupied by German troops are
rapidly recovering, and neither is in a " state of chaos,"
though the War was more destructive and cruel than
any war which preceded it. At the worst, the state of
India compared with that of contemporary Europe was
less disturbed by wars, while it never suffered from an
Inquisition, nor did India ever expel many thousands of

INDUSTRIES 155

useful citizens, as Spain expelled the Moors and the
Hebrews, destroying herself in the process.

The general security of life and property is reported
by travellers at periods when many dangers to both
were found to exist in countries outside her well*
ruled and prosperous area. We read also of numer-
ous banks, a well-known sign everywhere of security
and settled government. I have already mentioned the
fact, showing the normal high level of integrity pre-
vailing among the people, that written receipts were
not given for money or valuables deposited for safe
keeping. British Rule introduced a new standard,
making the honest return of money or goods de-
pendent upon the depositor possessing a written
receipt, acknowledging the deposit ; the Court refused
to compel the return unless the depositor presented
the written receipt. A double standard of honesty
was thus introduced by British Courts ; a man's word
no longer bound him ; he might cheat a depositor by
retaining his property, unless the latter had demanded
and obtained a written receipt for it ; if he had
followed the rule of honour prevalent in his own
country before the advent of the English merchants,
British Justice sanctioned his dishonesty one of
the many evil results of foreign rule, where the
foreigners are not only ignorant of the customs of
the people they govern, but also look down upon
the people as inferior to themselves, look upon

156 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

their customs with contempt, and force their own
upon them.

We must turn to the present and see how it came
about, and why the craft of hand-weaving fell on
evil days. It was partly due to deliberate wickedness,
inspired by selfishness and greed, and partly to the
closer contact with the West, the increased facilities
of transport and communications, and the consequent
competition of power-machine-made goods. Mr. A.
Ranganathan remarks, in the pamphlet before quoted :

" In Madras the number of people supported by
industries fell from 5,591,058 in 1911 to 4,112,771
in 1921. Mr. C. W. E. Cotton, Director of Industries,
finds it difficult to suggest any adequate explanation
for the fall. And yet the explanation seems to me
simple enough and it may be summed up in two
phrases : Lack of discriminate encouragement of
the home industries and unfair competition from
outside."

(B). THE PRESENT

We have shown that India was a country of Indus-
tries ; but of Village Industries, not of factories ; of
handicrafts, not of power-machinery. These industries
were part and parcel of her Village System, and their
decay has been the financial ruin of India. No country
can be prosperous which depends entirely on the raw
products of its soil ; crafts must flourish as well as
agriculture, and from their union is born prosperity.

INDUSTRIES 157

It will be remembered that it was the destruction of
the wool industry of Ireland by Britain that drove half
her people from her shores as emigrants to the United
States of America, and compelled many of those left
behind to go as labourers to England during the harvest
season to supplement, by the wages there earned, the
poor living which they could gain in their own land.
Here in India the story has been repeated on a huge
scale, and the peasants, averse to emigration, starve
at home, while many migrate to towns during the slack
season, when women and children suffice for the
agricultural work. Moreover, the destruction of Village
Industries has had an indirect result, aggravating agri-
cultural difficulties. Many craftsmen, especially the
weavers, unable to dispose of their wares and unable
also to face the competition of the cotton cloths of
Lancashire, deserted their ancestral craft and took up
poor land on the margin of cultivation, yielding poor
crops.

As Mr. Ranganathan remarks :

" This unceasing pressure on land has resulted in
more and more land being brought under cultiva-
tion, and people are finding it increasingly difficult
to support themselves by agriculture. In the very
nature of things in India, there are at present, few
ways by which the agriculturists can supplement their
income by subsidiary activities of one kind or another/'

Lancashire was further aided to supplant India-
woven fabrics by the astounding policy of Britain,

158 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

which taxed Indian-produced cloth for the benefit
of the Lancashire products, imposing what was called
the Cotton Excise ; she protected Lancashire imports
against the competition of home-made cloths, taxing
Indian products so that Lancashire might compete with
Indians in India " on equal terms " ! It was Protection
upside-down. Very different had been English policy
when the production of Lancashire cotton mills was in
its infancy. Indian calicoes were highly valued, as we
have seen, by English-women, who preferred them to
those of Lancashire. So a duty was levied on all
imports of such goods. As this did not suffice for the
shutting out of the superior Indian wares, an Act was
passed forbidding their import, and the import and
selling of such goods was made a legal offence. After
a time, the Indian trade with Britain was killed, and
Lancashire, having mastered the English market, then
demanded the opportunity of supplanting Indian
industry in India. The Cotton Excise imposed on Indian
goods supplying the Indian market was then invented,
and was only abolished last year, despite its scandalous
and unique injustice. And this after, be it remembered,
the open unabashed plundering of the eighteenth
century, the impoverishment of India going hand-in-hand
with the rise of English industrialism. As Lecky said in
his History of England in the Eighteenth Century :

" At the end of the seventeenth century, great
quantities of cheap and graceful Indian calicoes.

INDUSTRIES 159

muslins and chintzes were imported into England,
and they found such favour that the woollen and silk
manufacturers were seriously alarmed. Acts of
Parliament were accordingly passed in 1700 and
1721 absolutely prohibiting, with a very few speci-
fied exceptions, the employment of printed and
dyed goods of which cotton formed any part."

Indian Industries were, in this way, aided by heavy-
import duties on other Indian products, practically
destroyed. England was then in favour of Protection,
for her own nascent industries, becoming a Free Trade
country only when she had a surplus to export, and
when " the great Dependency " was becoming ar>
agricultural country only. Mr. A. Ranganathan writes
on this :

" The iron industry of the country was similarly
killed. Captain Townsend of the ordnance depart-
ment has left it on record, that India is more richly
endowed than any other country in iron ore, and
this is confirmed in the observations to be found in
one of the statistical Atlases of India published
under the authority of the Government in the eigh-
ties. When the Government decided to establish
a system of railways, they might have simultaneously
attempted to manufacture the necessary iron out of
the ore available in India, and had it at a less cost
than they paid to get it from England. This would
have, according to Mr. Ball, Deputy Superintendent
of the geological survey, kept vast sums of money
in circulation in India and given employment to large
numbers of people who, for lack of it, were obliged
to swell the ranks of those dependent on land, to
the inconvenience of all, for their livelihood. The

160 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

same fate as befell the cotton manufactures over-
took the once thriving shipbuilding industry of
India. Mr. Taylor in his History of India has the
following

" ' The arrival in the port of London of Indian
produce in Indian-built ships created a sensation
among the monopolists, which could not have been
exceeded if a hostile fleet had appeared in the
Thames. The ship-builders of the port of London
took the lead in raising the cry of alarm ; they
declared that their business was on the point of
ruin, and that the families of all the shipwrights in
England were certain to be reduced to starvation.'

" And an obliging Government saw to it that the
Indian industry perished."

The Insurance Companies have frustrated attempts
to revive it by refusing to insure the sailing craft used
for coastal transport because they do not use steam.
And when some Bombay and other merchants some
years ago floated a company for passengers going
abroad, it was opposed by a combination of rival
English Companies and was unable to succeed.

The policy of the East India Company was to reduce
India to the condition of a " plantation/' that she might
supply English manufacturers with raw materials, receiv-
ing a portion of them back as manufactured articles,
while the price of the home-made cloth was increased
by the cotton excise.

Following the same policy, attempts have been made
to force Indian cultivators to grow long-stapled cotton,

INDUSTRIES 161

suitable to the factory machinery, instead of the short-
stapled, which suits the hand loom, the kind of cotton
they are accustomed to cultivate. In concessions for
mining minerals, for fresh land, for wood for manu-
facturing purposes, Indians find themselves everywhere
handicapped in their own country, and see the foreign-
er preferred.

In 1912-13, we find from the Government figures
of exports that raw materials and produce and articles
mainly unmanufactured (coal, gums, resins, lac, hides
and skins, metallic ore, scrap iron or steel, oil-seeds,
tallow, wax, textile materials, woods, timber, etc.),
were exported to the value of Rs. 1,030,479,594.
The value of textile cotton manufactures imported was
Rs. 608,215,774.

The condition of the weaver is rendered terribly
difficult by the same burden as presses on the agricul-
turist the burden of hopeless debt. He gets yarn,
or the money wherewith to buy it, from the money-
lender, and one condition is generally made, that he
sell his cloth to the money-lender at a price less than
the weaver could gain in the open market. In other
cases the money-lender is the owner of a number of
looms, and lets out looms to weavers on hire, repaying
himself by paying each weaver a price below the value
of the cloth produced. The weaver thus becomes a
wage-earner instead of an independent earner of his
livelihood, a free man, while the money-lender becomes
11

162 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

a small capitalist, accumulating the profits over sub-
sistence wage of the men whose labour he buys. This
system is utterly alien from Indian thought, and if it
spread widely would bring about only a repetition of
the factory system, already started in India by for-
eigners, the "absentee capitalist" of Mr. Gokhale,
and copied, in self-defence, by a number of Indians.
If this spreads, India will have to go through the capital
and labour struggles of the West, with all their evils,
their hatreds and their extremes of wealth and poverty,
which have culminated in the present terrible strike in
England, and the, for the moment, abortive general
strike. It means a state of social war, which will lead
to future general strikes till the system perishes, and
co-operation succeeds competition. There are signs
of the coming changes in the United States, where
Trade Unions are taking over productive enterprises
and creating their own banks.

The Madras Government has endeavoured to help
the weavers by sending round a demonstration party
to teach them the use of the fly-shuttle by which the
productive power of the weaver is much increased.
A Weaving Institute was also started in the midst of
a weaving district. In Bengal, again, 10,000 weavers
were trained in a weavers' Training College, and then
returned to their villages to teach others.

Mr E, B. Havell, the author of Artistic and Industrial
Revival in India, has been a persevering worker in the

INDUSTRIES 163

task of saving the Indian Weaving Industry. He says
in this work :

" But do not let it be supposed that the mechani-
cal improvements necessary for the continued exist-
ence of India's greatest industry are mainly a matter
for expert knowledge. They are a few simple things
which any intelligent school boy or girl could learn
to manipulate in a week, though they are so impor-
tant for the village weaver that were the Education
Department as efficient as it should be, every village
schoolmaster would teach them and every Inspector
of Schools would be able to demonstrate them.
Possibly some day a Director of Public Instruction
may come to realise this, but, having vainly ham-
mered at official doors for many years, I cannot
waste much more time there. It is, after all, more
important that India should learn the lesson of
self-help.

" These suggestions apply to the village weaver
who is too poor, helpless, and ignorant to make any
attempt to adopt even the simplest improvements
to his apparatus. The educational measures hitherto
employed, officially, and unofficially, hardly touch his
case at all. It is useless to provide schools, exhibi-
tions and demonstrations of improved appliances for
his edification He cannot afford to leave his loom
to attend them and has not the means, even if he
had the energy, to obtain the required improve-
ments which might help him out of his difficulties ;
though the cost of them would seem to be a small
matter, for a total expenditure of ten or twelve
rupees would provide him with apparatus which
would certainly double, and, in some cases, treble
his output (pp. 177, 178).

164 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

" I have several times called public attention to
the success which Mr. A. F. Maconochie, I.C.S., had,
while he was Collector of Sholapur, in the Bombay
Presidency, in reviving the local weaving industry by
the simple expedient of making arrangements to
provide the weavers with raw materials on reason-
able terms, advancing them cash at reasonable rates
in the slack season, and enabling them to obtain the
best market price for their labour all of which
advantages are denied them by the rapacious village
money-lender. In three years the condition of three
hundred weavers had greatly improved, twenty-five
of them had paid off all their old debts, and re-
covered their mortgaged property from the sowcars ;
and at the same time the scheme itself had given a
fair dividend on the capital used.

" If this can be done without any attempt to im-
prove the methods and appliances of the weavers, it
stands to reason that an efficient organization which
gives both financial and practical educational assist-
ance would be certain of success. The example
of ten thousand weavers in the Serampore District
of Bengal is a proof that simple improved appliances
can enable village weavers to double their earnings
even without any outside assistance (pp. 179, 180)."

In India, of late years, another road has been taken,
which, with Home Rule, will succeed far more rapidly
than it can hope to do under a foreign Government,
and against the opposition of the foreign capitalists, with
whom the few large Indian capitalists are associated.
The Madras Government also has tried to revive the
weaving industry through co-operation, but its suspi-
cions of the capacity and honesty of Indians, unless

INDUSTRIES 165

supervised by the English, cripples the co-operative side
of the revival, on which widespread success depends.
The suspicion is absurd, comparing the Past of India
with that of Britain. It is easy to employ Indians in sub-
ordinate positions wherein they deny them all initiative,
and then to declare that they have none ; Indians can
only show their powers where they are free, and the
millennia of their prosperous Past compared with their
condition under British Rule is the answer. It is true
that where the British force their own ways on the
Indians, the latter often do not work them well, having
had no training in them. For instance, Local Self-
Government in the Districts and sub-Districts is often
complained of, but where, as in Bengal, the Act in-
stituting local Government has been framed more on
Indian lines, it has been a great success, as has been
shown in the third Section of Chapter I.

This other road is that of co-operation, the institu-
tion of Co-operative Banks and Village Co-operative
Credit Societies. In the Annual Report of Co-opera-
tive Societies in Bihar and Orissa, 191 1-12, we find
the following :

" Experience has proved that a co-operative
society well formed and properly supervised can be
run by ordinary villagers with immense benefit to all
concerned. It can save the raiyat from the mahajan
and give him a new outlook on life ; it can make him
thrifty, hard-working and self-reliant ; it can improve
agriculture, sanitation and education ; it can heal

166 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

factions and stop petty litigation ; it can make
village life healthier in all its relations. All these
results I have myself seen. Of all the methods of
attacking the agricultural problem, not on one but
on every side, co-operation is incomparably the most
promising. A net-work of societies would immense-
ly facilitate general administration, for the principle
goes to the very root of the matter. The instinct of
association is already deeply implanted in the people,
and the co-operative movement which appeals
primarily to this instinct has undoubtedly come
to stay."

In the Madras Bulletin of Co-operat/on many useful
figures are given to show the spread of this movement.
It was practically started by the Act of 1 904, and by
1912 there were 957 Co-operative Credit Societies in
Madras Presidency, and the Central Urban Bank had
deposits from these to the amount of Rs. 2,443,370.
Such Societies not only aid weaving but all agricultural
and other industries.

It is probable that such activities would be far more
successful if built on the lines of the old Craft Associa-
tions, some of which still survive, as the goldsmiths,
and those of master builders, masons and decorators,
who lately built the splendid palace of the Maharaja of
Mysore.

In connection with Industries, many western writers
refer to the Guilds in India, and in a very useful lecture
given by Mr. M. R. Sundara Aiyar, under the auspices
of the Indian Guild of Science and Technology, he laid

INDUSTRIES 167

much stress on the old Crafts of India. I have not
seen the lecture itself, but only a long report in the
Allahabad Leader (a daily journal, edited by a learned
and brilliant Indian, Mr. C. Y. Chintamani). The
following summary will show its drift. Mr. Sundara
Aiyar compared the Indian Guilds with the Mediaeval
Craft Guilds of Europe, but pointed out that they
worked in harmony with the Government of the king-
dom in which they were, not against it, as often in
mediaeval European countries. He noted that while
in Europe these Guilds were oppressed by the robber
Barons, who were then so numerous who came down,
upon the Guilds to take away their wealth, as they
grew wealthier and wealthier by their industry the
Indian Guilds themselves often served as Municipal
Councils, and in large centres the headsman of each
Guild was represented in the Council. They were
thus linked up with the Government here instead of
being in opposition as they were in Europe. The
lecturer urged that these methods of local administra-
tion, which had existed from the remote past in India
ought now " to be developed in two directions : firstly,
in developing the present municipal organization of
the country, which would maintain its branch railways,
minor irrigation works, roads, police, institutions for
primary education, sanitation, and for the relief of the
poor" and so on ; secondly, " in the productive and
distributive, co-operative and profit-sharing industrial

168 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

associations, which would organize capital and labour
efficiently for the welfare of the community." He
rightly pointed out that :

" the promulgation of wrong theories as to ancient
Indian polity and the relegation of India to the
primitive stage of civilization, have led many to
argue that Indians were not familiar with constitu-
tional forms of government, or Self-Government,
and many Indians themselves have come to believe
in that theory."

Surely because their " English Education " had not
included the study of Indian history as given in their
own literature. They knew the City State of
Aristotle the Greek, but not the Village Republics of
Kautilya. Mr. Sundara Aiyar criticised the evidence
of Indian witnesses before a Royal Commission, that
Indians were not fit to be heads of offices or Directors
of Companies. He rightly said that the study of
Indian Mediaeval Guilds discloses a remarkable devel-
opment of municipal organization and corporate
industrial life. He described the regulation of wages,
the collection of rates and taxes, and the system of
local finance with which these local bodies were able
to carry on the administration without much help from
the central Government.

I do not myself think that the local Village Pan-
ch&yats and the Craft Guilds were identical, except
perhaps in very small villages. We have to remember
that village government in ancient times, while stable

INDUSTRIES 169

in essentials was adaptable in non-essentials ; in large
villages there were quarters assigned, as we have seen,
to different trades, while in small ones no such
aggregations took place ; the rules of each Craft,
derived from its Shilpa Shastra would be customary,
" what always has been," and these Guilds would be
spread over large areas, while the Village Panchfiyat
was concerned with Village Administration ; here, again,
in small villages they might take counsel together,
while in large each would have its own Panchayat.
The duties mentioned above are concerned with Village
Administration, not with Craft Rules.

(C). THE REMEDY

As has already been said in Section (8) some efforts
have already been made to revive the Village Indus-
tries by improving the looms of weavers, and by
Co-operative Credit Societies and Co-operative Banks.
When Self-Government is restored to the Villages,
these methods will receive an immense impetus,
though they can never be completely successful until
the old balance of agriculture and industries is restored
in every village, and until the other crafts for the
supply of necessaries in the village are also re-
established, such as the iron-smith, the carpenter,
the potter, the spinner, for the local supply of yarn,
and until the communal holding of land replaces

170 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

individual peasant-proprietorship, and the old system
of pasture and forest is restored. This will entail
village shepherds and wood-cutters. The Co-operative
Society will have among its workers the agent for the
collection of surplus products and their transfer to
towns for sale, and to agents in ports for export
abroad. It will probably be found convenient to have
distributive stores in Taluka towns and in the District
capital, to lessen the work of the village agents. But
these details will be arranged by business men, and
need only be outlined here.

Among the powers given to the Village Panchayat,
in the Commonwealth of India Bill, are the establish-
ment and control of Co-operative Stores and Banks,
as well as of Cottage Industries, so that the villager
can dispose of his products at the Stores within the
village itself ; these form the first link in the transfer
chain which unites the producer to the port for export
after the home market has been fully supplied. The
reader will see why I have emphasised Village Self-
Government as the basis of all effective reforms in the
political field. No foreign official, trained in the ways
of the 4 .English market supplied with factory-made
goods, can ddapt himself to this immemorial way of
<typrking of thte Indian. As this system becomes com-
plete and alt its parts are fitted together, forming a
complete whole of industrial production and distribu-
tion, I 'doubt very much whether the factory system

INDUSTRIES 17T

will be able to hold its own in India, a country of
villages ; then we shall get rid of the crowded slums
in the few factory towns, the nests of diseases and
the appalling infant mortality ; the babes will be born
in healthy conditions, will grow up, as their ancestors
did, in healthy surroundings, will receive education
as of old, will have free, wholesome, well-fed, happy
lives.

Far-sighted Indians among the Intelligentsia are
recognizing this. Here is an extract from the lecture
before quoted of an Indian gentleman, now Sir
C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar, speaking many years ago to
a District Conference, the lecture issued as the
pamphlet, Co-operat;Ve Societies and P&nchayats :

" The one method by which this evil (emigration
to towns) can be arrested, and the economic and
social standards of life of the rural people elevated
is by the inauguration of healthy Panchayats in
conjunction with the foundation of Co-operative
Institutions, which will have the effect of resuscitating
village industries and of creating organized social
forces. The Indian village, when rightly recon-
structed, would be an excellent foundation]
developed co-operative industrial orgajj

Again :

" The resuscitation of the villa
bearings not usually considere
the general subject of the i
chayat System. One of the ftUkVimfMrla'ntAfr
these is the regeneration of th jfc Ajun .^fit s of

172 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

the land. Both in Europe and in India the decline
of small industries has gone on pan passu with the
decline of farming on a small scale. In countries
like France, agriculture has largely supported village
industries, and small cultivators in that country have
turned their attention to industry as a supplementary
source of livelihood. The decline of village life in
India is not only a political, but also an economic
and industrial problem. Whereas in Europe the
cultural impulse has travelled from the city to the
village, in India the reverse has been the case. The
centre of social life in this country is the village, and
not the town. Ours was essentially the cottage
industry, and our artisans still work in their own huts,
more or less out of touch with the commercial
world. Throughout the world the tendency has
been of late to lay considerable emphasis on
distributing 'and industrial co-operation, based on a
system of village industries and enterprise. Herein
would be found the origins of the arts and crafts
guilds and the garden cities, the idea underlying all
these being to inaugurate a reign of Socialism
and Co-operation, eradicating the entirely unequal
distribution of wealth amongst producers and con-
sumers. India has always been a country of
small tenantry, and has therefore escaped many
of the evils the Western Nations have experienced,
owing to the concentration of wealth in a few
hartds. The communistic sense in our midst, and the
fundamental tenets of our family life have checked
such concentration of capital. This has been the
cause for the non-development of factory industries
on a larger scale."

In small western countries, like Denmark supremely,
Co-operative Societies are successfully at work, both in

INDUSTRIES 175

agriculture and industry. Co-operative Dairy Farms
export large quantities of butter, while Co-operative
Industries form part of the village life. In Switzerland,
village industries are found, and the handicrafts of
Norway and Sweden are well known. Before the
Russian Revolution, a great Russian woman, Mme.
Pogotsky, brought over to England beautiful em-
broideries of Russian peasants, and other products, and
established in London a centre for this sale. There
are no cases, I think, of prosperity in village life in
which the people have been thrown entirely on
the land. Ireland, on a small scale, India on
a large, have demonstrated by famine the hope-
less misery of a population dependent wholly on
agriculture.

As I have said above, the establishment of the
rural Co-operative Credit Societies began only with the
Act of 1904. Yet I find from The Leader the
Allahabad journal before mentioned that Sir Edward
Maclagan stated, speaking in 1913 to the imperial
Council, that, since 1 906, the number of such Societies
had increased from 843 to 8, 1 77, and the number of
members from 91,000 to 403,000. He also stated
that large provincial Banks had been started in several
provinces, and the capital at the disposal of the
Societies had risen from Rs. 23| lakhs to Rs. 235
lakhs (a lakh is 100,000). The Madras Co-operative
Bulletin states that " in 1908 there were 1,201 Village

174 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

Banks with a membership of 93,200, and 149 Urban
Banks with 55,000 members, carried on upon Co-
operative lines." A year later there were 2,008
banks and 184,897 members.

The work of the Co-operative Societies, I may say
in passing, should not be restricted to industries, for
through them the Taluka Sabha should purchase
agricultural machinery and loan it to villages where
the land needs deep ploughing and by communal
holding is in sufficiently large areas, and should also
have well-bred bulls to be loaned to villages to
improve the breed of cattle where it js deteriorating.

With regard to the weaving industry, the Rev. J. H.
Macfarlane says :

" There was one industry of supreme importance,
namely, weaving. The multitude of hawkers at
Kodaikanal provide an illustration a' propos. Silks,
fine and coarse cloths, rugs, curtains, and so forth
were manufactured largely in villages. But one can
never find a rich working weaver. All are poor for
one or more reasons. What methods for the
amelioration of the condition of the weavers could be
emphasised by Missionaries ? Firstly, improved
methods of work should be encouraged and taught.
The fly-shuttle should be introduced, where practic-
able. Secondly, a cheap machine is needed for pre-
paring the warp. Thirdly, the weavers should be
delivered from the middlemen. Few weavers are
.independent and they lose much by borrowing.
Fourthly, the weavers should be urged to combine
and co-operate in work and fcorm weaving societ-
ies, to buy their own yarn and machines. But

INDUSTRIES 175

Co-operation is foreign to India, and this phase of
work will be difficult to introduce."

This is quoted from a paper by the Rev. J. H.
Macfarlane, of the London Mission, Cuddapah. He
was speaking at the Missionary Industrial Conference.
The last sentence is curious and has not been justified
by events.

Along this road revival may be made while the
political battle is going on.

IV
THE AWAKENING OF INDIA

WE have seen the unexpected result of English
Education in India the creation of what a Viceroy
called a " microscopical minority/' the English-educated
Indians, the Intelligentsia of India. We have seen
that, in India, the villages and the towns occupied to
each other a position the reverse of that occupied by
their congeners in the West. Separated in the West,
they were closely blended in the East, and the mem-
bers of the highly educated professional classes
constantly speak of "my village," the village whence
they came, the village of their ancestors. However
slowly, the thoughts of the educated filtered into the
villages and awoke in the peasantry the slumbering
memories of their Immemorial Past. They cared little
for the politics of the towns, still less for those of
Provinces, and of Governments yet further off these
had not affected seriously the " little village re-
publics " ; but they cared profoundly for their own
village politics, which had been crushed half a century

THE AWAKENING OF INDIA 177

before. Under the influence of those who had made
in 1884 the scheme of the National Congress in
Madras, and had brought it into being in Bombay
in 1 885, the peasants began to discuss their griev-
ances, and later to meet in conferences among
themselves ; vernacular newspapers, edited by one of
the Intelligentsia, slowly reached the village, and a
villager, able to read, would be surrounded by his
fellows and read out the contents, to start fruitful
discussions. News of outer doings passed from village
to village in the strange eastern way, and the thought
atmosphere changed. The ever-present teacher of
hunger and suffering applied the lessons, and traditions
became inspirations. Thus was the seed in the villages
sown which sprang up as the agitation for Home Rule
in 1915, when Mr. Gandhi said of myself : " She has
made Home Rule a mantram in every cottage." The
movement seemed sudden and surprising, because the
seed was quietly sown. India's Intelligentsia worked
to educate their countrymen, and the annual meetings
of the National Congress, reported in the Indian
Press, were as the rain falling on the hidden seed.

Meanwhile the movement for National Education
was teaching patriotism and pride of race and country,
aided by the spirit of Freedom breathed through
English literature, as already said. The movement for
National Education was its child. It began by lectures
about 1895. The founding of the Central Hindu
12

178 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

College and School at Benares in 1898, in which
Hindus and Englishmen worked as professors and
masters side by side on subsistence wages, in thorough
equality, was followed by other institutions, inspired
by a similar spirit ; girls' schools followed under the
same inspiration, and religion became an Integral part
of the training of patriotic youth, while the story of
India's Past fired their enthusiasm. Religious Reform
had led to Educational Reform, and Social Reform
followed in their wake.

The work went steadily on, stimulated by the tyran-
nical policy of Lord Curzon, the Viceroy. We have
seen his Education Act of 1904. The partition of
Bengal fired that Province to fury and caused a total
withdrawal of patriotic Bengalis from contact with the
British autocracy. The elders stood coldly aside ; the
young plunged into a widespread revolutionary move-
ment; Surendranath Bannerji, the "uncrowned King
of Bengal/' became the idol of the Province, Arabindo
Ghosh its inspiration, intensified by his martyrdom.
Gokhale as President of the Congress of 1905, de-
nounced the Viceroy ; Dadabhai Naoroji, President in
1906, struck the note of Self-Government as the
emedy.

" The whole matter can be comprised in one
word, Self-Government, or Swaraj, like that of the
United Kingdom or the Colonies . . . Self-Govern-
ment is the only and chief remedy. In Self-
Government lie our hope, strength and greatness.

THE AWAKENING OF INDIA 179

. . . Be united, persevere, so that the millions now
perishing by poverty, famine and plague and the
scores of millions that are starving on scanty sub-
sistence may be saved, and India may once more
occupy her proud position of yore among the
greatest and civilized Nations of the West."

Another great figure had arisen in Indian Politics, a
statesman and a combatant against autocracy of the
most militant type, Bal Gangadhar Tilak. He inherited
the fiery traditions of his race, the Marathas, strong*
brained, strong-armed, that warred against the great
Mughal Empire, and, had India been awake, he might
have played the part of a Cromwell. He was imprison-
ed unfairly, and was only the more loved, and came
out of gaol a bitter enemy of the British Rule. " Free-
dom is my birthright and I will have it," was his war-
cry, and he aroused a spirit that will never disappear
till Freedom is won. Two parties developed in Indian
politics, embodied in the two great leaders : Gokhale
who would use only constitutional means, Tilak who
would use constitutional or unconstitutional to set
India free. India was then in the grip of a number of
laws that made all effort to win Freedom dangerous.
No man's liberty was safe who desired Freedom of his
country. Men of the highest character, if they were
known to desire a change in the methods of Govern-
ment, were ordered to give security for good behaviour,
like vagabonds, and refusing, were thrown into prison.
Gokhale, with his small but splendid " Servants of

180 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

India Society/' the members of which were pledged to
a life of poverty and political work, became the
nucleus of the " Moderate," later the Liberal, Party,
Tilak of the " Extremist." Tilak was again thrown into
prison with a savage sentence of six years, to come
out aged but unchanged in thought and courage.
Meanwhile India had grown.

The Russo-Japanese war, a war between East and
West as it was felt to be, was another element, this
time from outside, which helped to awaken India,
and was, from one point of view, her salvation. For
Indian Ideals were in peril for the first time in her
history, and Indian Ideals were essentially the Ideals
of the East. The peril lay in the fact that she had
-assimilated all other invaders and had re-made them
into Indians, but the British were denationalizing her
by forcing on her their ways, their methods, their
civilization, and were teaching her western-educated
class to copy them and to regard their own as inferior.
They could never be assimilated, for they were birds
of passage, not settlers in the country ; they carried
" home " their gains from Indian cheap labour, and
their pensions for having governed India inefficiently.
So incessant was their insistence on their stay here
.as foreigners, that some Indians caught the ridiculous
habit of saying, "I am going home this year," when
they were going to pay a visit to England. The
-defeat of the great Russian Power by little Japan sent

THE AWAKENING OF INDIA 181

a shock of astonishment through India. What ? An-
Eastern Nation facing a Western Nation on a field of
battle ? What ? The white people were not then-
resistless ? They had been met and overthrown by a
coloured race, by men like themselves ? A thrill of hope
ran through Asia, Asia invaded, Asia troubled by white
" spheres of influence," with settlements of white
people, insolent and dominant, rebelling against
Eastern laws, rejecting Eastern customs with contempt,
humiliating coloured Nations in their own lands and
arrogating powers to which they had no right. Despair
changed into hope. Asia awoke, and with Asia India.

The hope strengthened when the new King-
Emperor and his Consort visited India on their
Coronation and when the Partition of Bengal,
declared so often to be irrevocable, was revoked.
This act of justice taught India that, deprived of arms
as she was, she was yet strong, even when all seemed
hopeless, though the brutal methods of repression,
the sufferings endured by her self-sacrificing youth,
aroused a deep and abiding hatred, which dug a gulf
between the Bengalis and the English rulers, and was
the parent of later revolutionary movements in that
Province.

In a lecture delivered in 1913, I laid down the views
on which my whole work in India has been based :
" the building up of India into a mighty Self-Governing
Community"; "the old system of Government in

182 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

India, more than any other, showed a genius for
Self-Government in the people ; it shows that the
Indian, as it were by nature, is capable of guiding, of
shaping, of controlling his own affairs. Competent
Self-Government, effective Self-Government, can only
be carried on over an area where the people who
compose the governing body understand the questions
with which they have to deal."
I submitted :

" The ancient system prevalent here dealt with
things in a much more practical way, a way which
made Self-Government at once effective, competent
and real. If the Future is to be built on the Past,
then we must have the Village Councils, the
' grouped Villages ' Councils, and so on in extend-
ing areas to the District and Provincial Councils or
Local Parliaments, and above them the National
Parliament, which would send representatives to the
Imperial Council. None would be without a share
in governing, but his power would be limited to the
area over which his knowledge extended, and there
would be no barrier anywhere to the rising of the
competent."

These are the principles which, twelve years later,
were embodied in the Commonwealth of India Bill
of 1925, now before the House of Commons in the
British Parliament, ordered to be printed after it had
passed its first reading. It was drawn up by the
National Convention of 1925, of which I was General
Secretary. The definite campaign for Home Rule

THE AWAKENING OF INDIA 183

began in the spring of 1914, on January 2, when my
fellow- workers and myself started a weekly Review,
7 fie Commonweal, on the four lines already laid down.
We stood for Religious Liberty, regarding all religions
as ways to God ; for National Education, " with an
open path from primary schools through higher schools
to the Universities " ; for Social Reform, including
foreign travel, uplift of the submerged classes, abolition
of child-marriage, seclusion of women, colour bar and
the caste system.

The Political Reform we aimed at was Self-Govern-
ment for India, in union with Britain in a spirit of love
and co-operation, and we asked for this in the Home
Rule League of 1915, the Congress League scheme of
1916, the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms of 1919, the
working them, unsatisfactory as they were, and the
opposition in 1920 to Mr. Gandhi's Non-Co-operation
movement.

Here is the declaration in The Commonweal :

" In Political Reform we aim at the building up of
complete Self-Government from Village Councils,
through District and Municipal Boards and Provincial
Legislative Assemblies, to a National Parliament,
equal in its powers to the legislative bodies of the
Self -Governing Colonies, by whatever name these
may be called ; also at the direct representation of
India in the Imperial Parliament, when that body
shall contain representatives of the Self-Governing
States of the Empire. All measures that tend in this
direction we shall support, and all that retard it we

184 INDIA. BOND OR FREE?

shall oppose. We shall recognise the National Con-
gress and the non-official members of representative
bodies as voicing the will of India. We claim an
open path for Indians to every post in their native
land, as promised by the Proclamation of 1858, and
the abolition of every law that places them in a
position inferior to that enjoyed by the English. We
ask that capacity and high character shall determine
all appointments to office, and that colour and
religion shall be entirely disregarded as qualifications.
" One thing that lies very near to our hearts is
to draw Great Britain and India nearer to each
other by making known in Great Britain something
of Indian movements, and of the men who will
influence from here the destinies of the Empire."

In February, 1914, a heavy blow was struck at the
movement for Feedom. Gopala Krishna Gokhale
passed away. Mis right hand man, V. S. Srinivasa
Shastri, was elected in his place, and nobly has he
filled it ever since. Resembling his Chief in wide know-
ledge, steadfast devotion to India, calm judgment
and polished eloquence, he has served his country
well. Outstanding have been his services to Indians
abroad in pleading for justice to them, and one great
triumph has been the passing of an Act in Australia
which has placed resident Indians on a perfect equality
with the white Australian citizen, giving them all the
same rights and privileges. ,

In the spring of 1914 1 went to England, to try to
form an Indian party in Parliament : the effort failed,
but outside Parliament it was decided to support

THE AWAKENING OF INDIA 185

India's definite demand for Home Rule by forming aa
auxiliary Home Rule League for India, and at a crowded
meeting in Queen's Hall, London, Earl Brassey in the
chair, I urged the necessity of Home Rule, and in.
answer to an absurd suggestion that India's loyalty to
British Rule must be " unconditional," declared that
" the price of India's loyalty is India's Freedom."
Mr Jinnah and Lala Lajput Rai supported the demand.
On my return to India I bought a daily paper in
Madras, published it on July 14, the date of the fall
of the Bastille, and renamed it New India. Round
this and the weekly Commonweal was destined to
rage the battle for Home Rule against the use of the
tyrannical Press Law (abolished by Reformed Councils
in 1921 with a mass of other cruel legislation, including
the Rowlatt Act), and they bore aloft the banner of
Home Rule through the years of the Great Agitation
which ended in 1917, when Britain declared her goal
to be the establishment of Self-Government in India.
In the following month, August, 1914, came the
unexpected crash of the Great War. India at once
recognized that the success of Germany would mean,
an Empire of Force, while the success of Britain would
mean ultimately an Empire, or rather a Commonwealth
of Free Nations, each Self-Ruling and acknowledging
as their link a constitutional Monarch. She rose in
defence of that Ideal, led by her Intelligentsia, for*
getting all her sufferings. Practically the whole of the

186 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

younger Bar of Madras volunteered to serve ; the
offer was rejected and a chill was felt, but a Madras
Hospital Ship was equipped, the country villages sent
their men, the rich their money. The lessons of the
War began.

Things were said by leading British statesmen, two
of them Prime Ministers of the Empire, which rang
through India and have never been forgotten.
Mr. Asquith drew a vivid picture of the condition of
Britain if Germany should win the victory, if Germans
ruled in Britain, levied taxes, held all highest offices,
made her laws, controlled her policy ; he passionately
cried out that it would be " inconceivable and intoler-
able " ; he spoke of the " intolerable degradation of
a foreign yoke." Mr. Lloyd George declared that the
principle of Self-Determination must be applied " in
tropical countries." Later, President Wilson proclaimed
that the war was to make " the world fit for free men
to live in " the world, not only Europe and North
America. Was it any wonder that India recognised
the world-humiliation imposed on her by her being
ruled by a foreign Nation, of being subject to what had
been described as the " intolerable degradation of a
foreign yoke " ? She believed that all the fine phrases
were true, and that she was fighting for her own liberty
as well as for Britain's. Her army, kept on a war
footing, was the first to reach the field of battle, was
flung across the road to Parts on which the Germans

THE AWAKENING OF INDIA 187

were advancing, forcing back with their huge numbers
the splendid but small army of Britain's veterans, who
fought every yard of the way but inevitably fell back
slowly before the great waves of Germany's over-
whelming numbers, It was at that critical moment
that the Indians arrived, and it was no wonder that
in both Houses of the British Parliament the members
sprang to their feet and cheered with hot enthusiasm,
when the news reached them that the German advance
was checked, and that the Kaiser's boast that he would
41 dine in Paris in a fortnight " had been falsified by
the appearance of the Indians. General Sir James
Willcocks, K.C.B, G.C.M.G., K.C.S.I., D.S.O., LLD.,
who wrote a book, With the Indians in France, pre-
faced it : "To my brave comrades of all ranks of the
Indian Army I dedicate this book, which is an earnest
endeavour to record their loyalty and imperishable
valour on the battle-fields of France and Belgium." It
was published in 1920, and Sir James spoke of what he
knew, for he commanded the Indian Army Corps for a
year, " for the first time in history to be employed in
Europe." He ends the Introduction of his book,
having said that it was due to India that the facts
should be told, by writing :

" The day is past when that great portion of our
Empire could be kept in comparative darkness ; the
light is dawning, and the Great War has opened to
her an opportunity which she never had before. Her
sons have shared the glory of the Empire. From

188 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

the boggy fields and trenches of Flanders and the
desert sands of Egypt ; from the immortal heights
of Gallipoli ; from the burning plains of Mesopota-
mia and the impenetrable jungles of East Africa,
comes up with one voice, from the thousands who
fought and bled for England :

" India has taken a new birth ;

The heaven above, the sea, the earth
Have changed for aye, the darkness dies,

Light has illumined all men's eyes,
Since Armageddon's day.

"... One of my chief difficulties at the begin-
ning of this war was to make it understood that the
Indians cannot be treated as pure machines, and
that they possess national characteristics as varied
as those between Scandinavians and Italians. I own
that Sir John French and his Staff generally made
every allowance for these facts, but there were
others who made none ; an Army Corps (no matter
its fighting strength in numbers) was an Army Corps
and nothing else. An Army Corps was supposed to
be able to occupy so many thousand yards of
trenches, and the orders were issued by this routine
rule.

fi It might be said the Indian Corps was sent as a
Corps, and times were too pressing to go into such
details ; this is perhaps true, and we all recognised
it at the beginning of the Flanders fighting ; but as
time went on and the German attack was beaten
off, I saw plainly that you cannot expect a ship to
keep up full steam when the engineers and stokers
are lying shattered in the hold. And yet those brave
men not only filled a big gap in our battered line,
but, helped and encouraged by their comrades of

THE AWAKENING OF INDIA 189

the British battalions of the Indian Corps, held it
against incessant attack. Minewerfers, hand grenades,
and high explosives tore through them and flattened
out their trenches ; blood flowed freely ; but as
often as they were driven back from their defences
they managed to return to them again. India has
reason to be proud of her sons, and their children
may well tell with pride of the deeds of their
fathers."

Aye, that will be. But with it does go and will go
the bitter knowledge that the men did not win liberty
for their Motherland, and that instead of Freedom as
the due recompense for all her sacrifices, India re-
ceived the massacre of Amritsar and the ghastly atro-
cities under martial law in the Panjab. And she
remembers that she is still a subject Nation, and that
such crimes are still possible.

In estimating the effect of the War on India, it
must be remembered that the survivors returned to
India at its conclusion ; that they carried into the
villages from which they came the story of their
experiences, told how they had marched and ridden
through London streets, packed with cheering crowds,
had been feted, honoured by white people. They had
proved themselves in the trenches side by side with
white troops ; the bodies of their comrades who had
died to defend Britain were left in foreign lands.
Was it wonderful that Indians began to say that they
had been found worthy to die for the liberty of
Englishmen, to share with England in deaths, wounds.

190 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

hardships of every kind ; they returned to their homes
to find stiii pressing on their people and on themselves
" the intolerable degradation of a foreign yoke."

The Indian National Congress of 1914 claimed "the
recognition of India as a component part of a Federat-
ed Empire, in the full and the free enjoyment of the
rights belonging to that status." That was the note
that rang through India, and will ring until she wins
Self-Rule. It repeated the note of the Congress of
1906, the note of Self-Government, Home Rule. Its
policy was that all our strength should be turned
into a demand for Home Rule, after gaining which
all the piecemeal reforms we needed could be made
by ourselves.

V
HOME RULE FOR INDIA

EVENTS moved fast. The Congress of 1915 ordered
its Committees to prepare a scheme outlining India's
claim It was done and was endorsed at Lucknow by
the Congress of 1916, and also by the Muslim League.
Two Home Rule Leagues had been formed in
September. 1916, and these worked side by side, and
the two Presidents, Mr. Tilak and myself, were mem-
bers of both. Enthusiasm had risen higher and higher,
guided by a vigorous propaganda of pen and tongue
during the autumn of 1915 and the spring of 1916,
and the Madras Government took fright. Lord
Pentland, the Governor, a kind and well-meaning but
weak man, wholly in the hands of the old type of
Civilians, allowed some of these to ally themselves
with some of the ablest of the non-Brahmanas to
misrepresent the Home Rule Movement as the attempt
of the small number of Brahmanas to tyrannise over
the huge majority outside their own caste ; by utilising
religious feeling to stimulate political ambition, these

192 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

Civilians and the non-Brahmanas formed an unholy
combination which threw itself against Home Rule.
The Government consequently thought itself strong
enough to attempt repression, and the Press Act of
1910, which placed every newspaper in a Province at
the mercy of the local Government, was used against
New India, the leader of the Home Rule agitation.
On May 26, 1916, a notice was served on myself
levying a security of Rs. 2,000 on the paper. It was
paid, and Lord Pentland and his Government became
the chief propagandists of Home Rule, for New India
continued cheerfully on its path, knowing that it was
virtually doomed, unless the country rose in its
defence.

Now came in the value of my political training by
Charles Bradlaugh. " In fighting a bad law," he
would say, " never give way, but utilise every oppor-
tunity of delay which the law gives you. For time is
on the side of a just agitation, and stirs up the
people." Little chance of delay was there in action
taken under the Press Law, for it was by Executive
Order to a magistrate, and the magistrate was bound
to obey. Still the battle could be fought in the same
spirit fought out step by step, undeterred by inevit-
able failure. And it was so fought.

The security was forfeited on August 28, and a
new security of Rs. 10,000 was levied. The Press
Act gave to the Editor the option of paying in cash or

HOME RULE FOR INDIA 193

in Government notes, but the Government of Madras
did not feel bound by the law it utilised, and insisted
on cash. The Law Officer of the Governor-General's
Council had promised that interest should be paid on
any security levied. The Madras Government taking
cash, paid no interest, so levied also a continuing fine.
I began an action against the Government for the in-
terest, but that disappeared in the course of the
struggle and the final triumph.

The Press Act was so worded that defeat was ap-
parently certain, so beginning with a Special Bench in
the Madras Court on September 27, 1916, 1 fought
on up to the Privy Council. The Advocate-General of
the Madras Government was the prosecutor and I
defended myself, aided by the very able advice, and
on a technical point by the skilful pleading of Mr. C. P.
Ramaswami Aiyar. As I knew that I was bound to
lose the case, I arranged to sell the New India Press,
and the Vasanta Press on which also security of
Rs. 5,000 was levied as the printer of the Common-
weal, to two different persons when the need arose,
as the next step of the Government, under the Act,
would be to forfeit the Presses. I was wholly acquit-
ted under the charge of sedition and was admitted to
be perfectly loyal to the Crown ; but some of the
articles were held to come under other all-embracing
sections of the Act, so drawn that, as Sir Lawrence
Jenkins, the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court,
13

194 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

had pointed out, no one attacked by the Executive
under it could possibly escape. As time was wanted,
I applied against the decision of the Madras Court to
the Privy Council, as that prevented the Government
from taking further action until the appeal was decided.
The Government, having levied a second security, could
not forfeit it and then forfeit the Press, until the case
had been decided in London a way of fighting that
had apparently escaped the notice of the Govern-
ment of India in its efforts to strangle the Indian
Press. It had many successes with papers not trained,
as I had been, in the way of fighting bad law legally.
Charles Bradlaugh had abolished securities on the
English Press by the policy he had recommended to
me in case of need, and had received John Stuart
Mill's congratulations thereon. He must have been
pleased, I think, when the first reformed Legislative
Assembly and Council of State, abolishing a mass of
41 emergency legislation," reduced the Press Act to an
innocuous Registration Act.

A Home Rule (English Auxiliary) League had been
formed in England in 1915, in aid of the Indian Move-
ment, and it re-published a little book of mine, entitled
India A Nation, when the English Government, in
1916, persuaded the publishers to withdraw it from
circulation.

The adoption of the " Congress League Scheme/'
mentioned above, gave fresh vigour to the agitation

HOME RULE FOR INDIA 195

and this so provoked Lord Pentland, that he told the
Madras Legislative Council (May, 1917) that "all
thoughts of the early grant of Responsible Self-Govern-
ment should be put entirely out of mind." It was
apparently decided by the Madras Government that
as New India went on with the propaganda of Home
Rule, and as it could not forfeit the security and then
the Press, because of the appeal to the Privy Council,
it would stop the paper by interning the Editor
(myself), the Assistant Editor (Mr. B. P. Wadia)
and a particularly breezy and popular contributor
(Mr. G. S. Arundale), by interning this most objection-
able trio. These three out of the way, the paper
would probably collapse. The order was issued on
June 16, no reason being given, and Lord Pentland
refusing any explanation though he called me to see
him why or what for, I never learned ; he may have
supposed I would take the opportunity of asking for
mercy, but I did not. As I wrote a little later :

" I suspended New India on June 18th, sold the
Vasanta Press to Rao Sahab G. Soobhiah Chetty and
recovered its Rs. 5,000 on June 1 9 ; on June 20,
J sold the Commonweal Press to Mr. Ranga Reddi
and the New India Press to Mr. P. K. Telang, re-
covering Rs. 2,000 and Rs. 10,000, and issued a
notice to New India subscribers ; the paper appear-
ed again on the 21st ; it was quick work, but the
time was short, and I had to ' hustle.' So we
had three brand-new press-owners, under securities
of only Rs. 2,000 each, instead of Rs. 17.000. I do

196 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

not think the Press Act was intended to have a
motor car, driven by a lady of nearly seventy, rushed
through it in this way, like the proverbial ' coach and
horses/ But then it was drawn up by bureaucrats
who had no experience of Home Rulers ; they were
accustomed to revolutionaries, and even passive
re sisters, but had never met with constitutional
fighters for Liberty, who regarded them with amused
unconcern and perfect good temper. Before we
left, Mr. Horniman (Editor of the Bombay Chronicle)
and Mr. N. C. Kelkar (Editor of the Manratta) came
over from Bombay and Poona to offer help, and
each wrote an article for the New India of the
21st. As they were already Editors, we thought it
was better that Mr. P. K. Telang should assume
charge of New India, and he promptly filled the
gap. He forfeited the security in due course, and
another Rs. 10,000 was levied. When I resumed
the editorship, Mr. Telang presented the Press to
Mr. Ranga Reddi, who started again with another
Rs. 2,000. The magistrate, however, most improp-
erly kept the Rs. 10,000 on various excuses for
over a year, but when another magistrate took his
place, the money was at once refunded. The long
fight with good propaganda had helped Home Rule
immensely.

" For when we, the interned, foregathered at
Ootacamund (where I had, as President of the
Theosophical Society, a little house), a whirlwind
broke out, raged up and down the country, stormed
over to Britain, Russia. France, America, at several
hundred miles an hour. Questions were asked in
the House of Commons and in the Viceroy's Legis-
lative Council. Members of Parliament, like the
babes in the wood, were snowed under with leaves
of paper. * Who would have thought/ said a

HOME RULE FOR INDIA 197

very high official pensively, ' that there would have
been such a fuss over an old woman ? ' Crowds of
people and many popular leaders joined the Home
Rule League. Meetings were held ; resolutions flew
about ; C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar. Jamnadas Dwarka-
das, Congressmen everywhere, fanned the storm
and rode it. They preserved perfect order ; never
a window was broken ; never a riot occurred ; never
a policeman was assaulted ; never man, woman or
child went to gaol. For three months the vehement
agitation continued unbrokenly, without ever break-
ing a law, and the students who wanted to strike
were kept in their schools and colleges and then
came the Declaration of August 20, 1917, that the
goal of Great Britain in India was Responsible
Government, and an announcement that the Secre-
tary of State for India was coming thither
to learn the wishes of the people. To ' obtain
a calm atmosphere ' the three internees were
liberated.

" It was a truly constitutional triumph, won by a
United India, and was crowned by the election of
the Home Rule President (myself) as President of
the National Congress of 1917.

" Mr. Montagu, the Secretary of State, came to
India, and travelled with the Viceroy, Lord Chelms-
ford, all over India, meeting Deputations represent-
ing every type of political opinion. The National
Congress and the Muslim League and the two Home
Rule Leagues presented at Delhi on November 26,
1917, memorials asking for Home Rule. The National
Congress and the League were represented by a
Joint Deputation from their respective Executives,
and the memorial was read by Mr Surendranath

198 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

Bannerji. After a careful and argumentative pre-
sentation of the Indian case it wound up :

"'We submit that the reforms for which the
National Congress and the Muslim League plead,
are needed as much in the interests of the good
government of the country and the happiness and
prosperity of the people as for the legitimate
satisfaction of our National self-respect and for a
due recognition of India's place among the free and
civilized Nations of the Empire and the outside
world. Nor are they less necessary to strengthen
and solidify the British connection with this ancient
land. India has given freely of her love and service
to England, and she aspires to attain to her proper
place of equality and honour in the Commonwealth
of Nations, which are proud to own fidelity to his
Imperial Majesty the King-Emperor. If, as has been
said, the British Empire is the greatest secular power
on earth making for the good of mankind, India is
hopeful and confident that she will not be denied
what is in every way due to her, especially after
this great War of Liberty, in which it has been
authoritatively recognised that she has played a
distinguished and honourable part/

" The two Home Rule Leagues were represented
by Mr. Tilak and myself respectively, and we also
read our memorials. At Madras, the All-India Home
Rule League presented Mr. Montagu with a million
verified signatures, gathered in the Presidency, and
conveyed to him in three or four carts.

" It was the end of a strenuous struggle of three
crowded years ; to me the end of another stage in
twenty-four years of steady labour ; to the Congress
the end of one stage in its thirty-three years of
political efforts for Liberty.

HOME RULE FOR INDIA 199

" Thenceforth Liberty's battle entered on another
phase."

As President of the National Congress the gift
that had, since its foundation, been regarded as the
greatest proof of India's love and of her trust I
sketched the causes of what I had called " the New
Spirit in India." These were six in number :

1. The awakening of Asia.

2. Discussions abroad on Alien Rule and Imperial
Reconstruction.

3. Loss of belief in the superiority of the White
Races.

4. The Awakening of the Merchants.

5. The Awakening of the Women to claim their
ancient position.

6. The Awakening of the Masses.

The first was largely due to the Russo-Japanese
War and to the English ideas of Liberty already
mentioned ; Lord Minto, as Viceroy of India recog-
nised that " new aspirations were stirring in the hearts
of the people, that they were part of a larger move-
ment common to the whole East, and that it was
necessary to satisfy them to a reasonable extent by
giving them a larger share in the administration." It
is difficult for an English Viceroy, however sympathetic r
to realise that India wants not " a larger share in the
administration/' but Self-Government. Similarly I
noticed Lord Chelmsford (the Viceroy) start when, in

200 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

reading the memorial from the Home Rule League
above-mentioned, I quoted Mr. Asquith's words, as to
the " intolerable degradation of a foreign yoke/' as
expressing the feeling of the people of India towards
the British rule over their country.

Really, the awakening of India is not only a part
of the movement in Asia, stimulated by the aggress-
iveness of western peoples, but it is also part of that
World Movement towards Democracy, which began
for the West in the revolt of the American Colonies
against the rule of Britain, 'ending in 1776 in the
Independence of the Great Republic of the West, and
in the French Revolution of 1789. The invasion of
India by the European merchants in the seventeenth
century and its fatal results in reducing India to
ignorance and to poverty ; the self-abnegation of the
Samurai of Japan ; the fall of the Manchu dynasty in
China, followed by a Chinese Republic ; the struggle
of Persia to free herself from the " spheres of
influence " of alien Powers ; all these had their share
in the awakening of India ; and she has seen later the
fall of the Russian, German and Austrian Empires, and
the growth of Democratic institutions all over Europe.

European statesmen pretended that in the War of
1914 to 1918, they were, as Mr. Asquith said,
" fighting for nothing but freedom, and for nothing
short of freedom." In the speech just quoted, he was
promising to stand by France in her claim for the

HOME RULE FOR INDIA 201

restoration of Alsace and Lorraine, rent from her
after the War of 1870, and he defended her claim
because those provinces were suffering " the intoler-
able degradation of a foreign yoke." India has
realised that all the talk about Freedom was only
meant for white races, and held no sincere sympathy
for the coloured peoples, however civilized they might
be ; that the Empire of Britain meant only the rule
of the five white Nations instead of one, over coloured
races, the exploitation of their mineral resources and
of their crops for the benefit of Britain, and their
working as subordinates, even as slaves, of the white
men who had stolen their lands. Indians began to
feel that they were not allowed to have a country of
their own, like the other Nations of the world ; they
began to realise that though they had fought for the
Freedom, nay, for the very life of the Empire, they
were not to share in that Freedom ; they glimpsed
before themselves a future of subordination, of
inferiority, of unbearable humiliation. They had
fought as men, as equals ; the danger over, they were
to fall back into a " subject race."

Subject to whom ? To a white race in whose
superiority they had lost belief. First the triumph of
Japan, and then the frank brutality and cruelty of the
European War, the laying waste of cultivated lands,
the bombing from the air of cities full of non-com-
batants, forced them to see the thin veneer of

202 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

civilization over the savagery of European War, the
slaughter of the defenceless, the destruction of mag-
nificent buildings, the architecture centuries old scat-
tered in fragments over a devastated tract. Nothing
is left in India of the superstition " of the superiority
of Christendom over Asia." " Gazing from afar at
the ghastly heaps of the dead and the hosts of the
mutilated, at science turned into devilry and ever
inventing new tortures for rending and slaying, Asia
may be forgiven for thinking that, on the whole, she
prefers her own religions and her own civilizations."

The fourth sign of the New Spirit is very significant,
for the merchant class had not, as a rule, concerned
itself with politics ; its special duty was that of the
steward of the National resources, organizing agri-
culture and industries, accumulating wealth and dis-
pensing it, largely in the form of gifts to education,
charity to the poor, and generally among useful public
purposes. In the organization of the Nation, the
merchant was the typical householder, including men
of great wealth who made magnificent donations to
temples, schools, colleges, universities, and also small
traders who gave handfuls of rice or other food-stuffs
for the meals of students, gathering such aims for
themselves and their teachers. The normal attitude
of the Indian merchant save where denationalized by
western competition is the duty of charity, supremely
to religion and to education. The War awakened them

HOME RULE FOR INDIA 203

to the extent in which the foreign Government of
India had alienated her natural resources, allowing
them to pass into foreign hands ; German industries
were closed down, and no help was given for their
replacement ; Government securities became de-
preciated, and they were forced to sell them to meet
their liabilities ; Government paid for their goods in
War Bonds instead of cash. They were compelled to
realise the disadvantages of foreign rule ; moreover the
depreciation of Government paper made them doubt
the stability of the Government. They also realised
that India might be far more self-supporting than she
was and might export her surplus, as of old, and they
also saw the enormous advantage of Self-Government
to a country, when they witnessed the rapid increase
of Japanese trade under a Home Government. They
also noted how strongly their trade rivals, the European
Associations in India, opposed Indian Home Rule, and
that their own interests would benefit by it. As
Mr. J. W. Root had observed, to give Great Britain

" the control over Indian foreign trade and internal
industry that would be secured by a common tariff
would be an unpardonable iniquity . . . can it be
conceived that were India's fiscal arrangements
placed to any considerable extent under the control
of British legislators, they would not be regarded
with an eye to British interests ? Intense jealousy of
India is always cropping up in everything affecting
fiscal or industrial legislation."

204 . INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

The merchant class began to see that Home Rule
would be to them an immense advantage, and this
explains why, a little later, they contributed largely to
Mr. Gandhi's movement, which they mistakenly sup-
posed would bring Home Rule to India.

The awakening of the Women of India was the fifth
great factor in the production of the New Spirit. The
Theosophical Society had, by strongly aiding the revival
of Hinduism, intensified the repugnance felt by Indian
women towards foreign and Christian rule. They
resented the education that had led away their hus-
bands and sons from allegiance to their own Hindu
faith, and which had also for five or six generations
pushed away Indian women from their husbands' sides
in the new strange phase of public life, caused by the
dominance of the foreigner. The home had been
closed against him, but he dominated public life and
masculine education ; the culture of the men became
utterly different from that of the women, and while
they closed their home doors against him, he closed
against them the interests of the larger life of the
Nation. They cherished the names of the glorious
women of their race, rulers, poets, ascetics, even
warriors, and yearned for the re-winning of the elder
world. The ill-usage of Indians abroad, the Indenture
system with its dishonouring of Indian women, the parti-
tion of Bengal and other matters that touched their
religion, led to a striking instance of their antagonism

HOME RULE FOR INDIA 205

to British Rule, when five hundred highly-born women
of Bengal went to congratulate the mother of an
Editor, sentenced for sedition, for having given birth
to so noble a son. I wrote a little later :

" Deep in the heart of India's daughters arose
the Mother's Voice, calling on them to help her to
arise, and to be once more mistress in her own
household. Indian women, nursed on her old litera-
ture, with its wonderful ideals of womanly perfec-
tion, could not remain indifferent to the great
movement for India's liberty. And during the last
few years the hidden fire long burning in their
hearts, fire of love to Bharatamata, fire of resent-
ment against the lessened influence of the religion
which they passionately love, instinctive dislike of
the foreigner as ruling in their land, have caused a
marvellous awakening. The strength of the Home
Rule movement is rendered tenfold greater by the
adhesion to it of large numbers of women, who
bring to its help the uncalculating heroism, the en-
durance, the self-sacrifice, of the feminine nature.
Our League's best recruits and recruiters are
among the women of India, and the women of
Madras boast that they marched in procession when
the men were stopped, and that their prayers in
the Temples set the interned captives free. Home
Rule has become so intertwined with religion by the
prayers offered up in the great Southern Temples
sacred places of pilgrimage and spreading from
them to Village Temples, and also by its being
preached up and down the country by Sadhus and
Sannyasins, that it has become in the minds of the
women and of the ever-religious masses, inextricably
intertwined with religion*. That is, in this country,
the surest way of winning alike the women of the

206 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

higher classes and the men and women villagers.
And that is why I just said that the two words,
' Home Rule/ have become a Mantram."

The Awakening of the Masses inevitably followed
the lead of the English-educated Indians. The Indian
peasant and artisan had never troubled much about
the proceedings of the Governments of Provinces,
Kingdoms or Empires. The freely elected Village
Council, as we have seen, managed the village affairs
for countless generations ; since it had been destroyed
all had gone wrong with them. The land they had
cultivated to support their village Temple and its
priest had been seized by some incomprehensible
power, and the village school had vanished. The
peasant had to pay cash, instead of a share of the
crops, to some usurper, who represented the sacred
person of the Indian King. His land rent is raised
from time to time by some unknown power. He is
punished for innocent acts, and for breaking irrational
laws that did not exist in the time of his forefathers.
He is tyrannised over by village officials who used to
be controlled by the village. His educated country-
men lecture to him on interesting matters touching
the village life, and help him to join with his fellows
4n a movement he finds useful Co-operation. He
may read in the Quarterly Review :

" The change of attitude on the part of the
peasant coupled with the progress made in organiza-
tion mainly through the Co-operative propaganda,

HOME RULE FOR INDIA 207

is the outstanding achievement of the last decade,
and at the same time the chief ground for the
recent confidence with which agricultural reformers
can now face the future."

The submerged classes are also moving, much aided
by the Brahmanas, ashamed of their past indifference,
and the monster petition of a million signatures, quickly
gathered in favour of Home Rule, mentioned above,
shows how the people of the Madras Presidency have
been awakened to their need of political liberty.

We have seen how Gopala Krishna Gokhale spoke
of the stunting of his race under British Rule. The
Hon. Mr. Bhupendra Basu had also declared :

" A bureaucratic administration, conducted by an
imported agency, and centering all power in its
hands and undertaking all responsibility, has acted
as a dead weight on the Soul of India, stifling in us
all sense of initiative for the lack of which we are
condemned, atrophying the nerves of action, and,
what is most serious, necessarily dwarfing in us all
feeling of self-respect."

The cry for Home Rule, Swaraj (Self-Rule), ringing
from all parts of India, is really a cry for that which is
most priceless in a Nation's life, for the life of its very
Soul, for its right to grow, to evolve, on its own
National lines. It is an echo of the words :

" What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole
world and lose his own Soul ? What shall a man give
in exchange for his Soul ? "

208 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

India's very Soul is in peril. The fact that she can
deal with her own needs better than Englishmen can
deal with them is seen in the action of her only partially
free Legislatures since 1921, in giving Free Primary
Education to her people, compensation for injury to
her factory workers, and the suffrage to her women
on the same terms as it is given to men by the
Reform Act of 1919.

THE BREAKING UP OF UNITED INDIA

A very violent movement led by Lord Sydenham
and others, called " The Indo-British Association,"
arose in Great Britain in 1918, and assisted by the
bureaucracy in India, did all that greed of power could
do to prevent the Secretary of State for India from
proposing effective Reforms. When the Home Rule
Leagues for India sent Deputations to England to work
in favour of a generous and statesmanlike policy, they
were stopped at Gibraltar by the War Cabinet, their
passports cancelled, and their members held in Gibral-
tar for six weeks. This was done although both
Mr. Tilak and myself, the respective Presidents of the
Leagues, had declared that we would use to the
utmost whatever Reforms were granted in order to
obtain more. Much argument arose in India, some
declaring, at a Conference held in the Madras Presi-
dency in May, that they would boycott the new

HOME RULE FOR INDIA 209

Councils if the Reforms were inadequate, and attacking
those who would, even if inadequate, utilise them to
the utmost.

I urged this utilisation in the Commonweal, and was
asked why this question should be raised before the
report on the tour of the Viceroy and Mr. Montagu
was issued. I answered :

" Because if, in a natural surge of anger and dis-
trust, on finding the Reforms to be inadequate,
persons committed themselves to the policy of boy-
cotting the new Councils, it might be difficult for
them to retrace their steps, and Parliament, relieved
from the fear of an ' Irish Party ' in the new Coun-
cils, would ignore the agitation and sit tight, and
pass their inadequate measure. There is such a
thing as foresight in political work, and it may be
well sometimes to look ahead."

Unfortunately the words proved to be prophetic.
The Montagu-Chelmsford Report was published in
1918, and three views were taken in India, the basis
of subsequent parties ; the " Moderates " accepted
it, but urged important amendments ; the " Home
Rulers " declined to accept them, and urged amend-
ments ; the " Extremists " declined them altogether.
A Special Congress was held in Bombay on August 31
and September 1, and a compromise was agreed 1
to. declaring the proposed Reforms to be " inade-
quate, unsatisfactory and disappointing," but resolutions
were passed which would make them workable. A
14

210 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

Conference of Moderates in October made similar
amendments, but did not condemn the Report. The
regular Congress meeting in December rejected the
Pact made in Bombay by an Extremist majority against
the protest of the Home Rulers and a few Moderates.
Early in 1919 two Deputations went to London, one
from the National Congress and one from the Moder-
ate Conference. In February, 1919, the Home Rule
League split in twain, in consequence of Mr. Gandhi
starting " passive resistance " against the Rowlatt Act,
a movement which I opposed, part of the League
supporting him, while the other part supported me.
Each part sent a Deputation to England, and both did
useful work, co-operating with each other and with
the Moderates and with the Deputations from the
Muslim League and the Congress, and obtaining large
amendments in the proposed Bill ; we went before
the Joint Committee of the two Houses of Parliament
as witnesses, and also held various meetings in England.
The Rowlatt Act had been passed in a form which could
only be broken by revolutionaries, and it had been de-
cided to break other laws, chosen by a committee, as a
protest against it, laws such as those which enforced
the printing of the printer's name on all publications.
This seemed to me such an absurd proposal, that I
declined to accept it. I was prepared to disregard a
tyrannical law, which cancelled the ordinary rights
of a peaceful citizen, and to suffer whatever

HOME RULE FOR INDIA 211

penalty was imposed for the breach ; but I was
not prepared to break innocuous laws which I
had hitherto obeyed at the command of a com-
mittee.

The passive resistance movement of 1919 had been
stopped by Mr. Gandhi, who called it a " Himalayan
blunder " when it broke into rioting. But the Non-
Co-operation movement was none the less started in
April 1920. The Musalmans were much disturbed
about the Khilafat and Turkey, and had formed a
Khilafat Committee early in 1920, and Mr. Gandhi
suggested, if the Turkish Treaty should be unsatis-
factory, that, avoiding all forms of violence, people
holding office under Government and Government
menial servants should resign, " Non-Co-operation
with the Government, free from all things of violence,
is the only effective remedy open to the people."
A hartal (cessation of all work) was called for by
Mr. Gandhi for March 19, and was kept all over India.
A National week was fixed for April 6 to 1 3 (the day
of the massacre the year before). All parties were
represented, and on April 6 the repeal of the Rowlatt
Act was demanded. Mr. Gandhi declared that if it
were not repealed before the Reforms were started,
the request for " Co-operation would be futile, and
he, for one, would find the situation such as to make
remaining within the Empire impossible " (New India,
April 7). April 9 was Khilafat Day, and a resolution

212 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

was passed that if the just demands of the Musalmans
were not agreed to,

" it will be the duty of every Indian to withdraw
Co-operation from Government until pledges are
fulfilled and Muslim sentiment conciliated."

A great demonstration was held on April 17 irk
Madras, and Mr. Gandhi's " four progressive steps "
in Non-Co-operation were passed as follows :

" In consonance with the spirit of the Resolution
adopted by the All-India Khilafat Committee, this
Conference, in the event of the present agitation
proving futile and ineffective, calls upon all Indians
to resort to progressive abstention from Co-opera-
tion with Government in the following manner :

" Firstly, to renounce all honorary posts, titles and
memberships of Legislative Councils.

" Secondly, to give up all remuneratory posts
under Government service.

" Thirdly, to give up all appointments in the Police
and Military forces.

" Fourthly, to refuse to pay taxes to Govern-
ment."

Moulana Shaukat Aii, after reciting these, as Presi-
dent of the Conference, said :

" We do not embark on this step without fully
realising what it means. It means a movement for
absolute independence."

Mr. Gandhi did not endorse this, but some of us
realised that Non-Co-operation was not a movement for

HOME RULE FOR INDIA 213

Home Rule as a Free Nation among other Free Nations,
with the British Crown as the link of the Federation,
but was one of Mass Direct Action, directly revolution-
ary. As, personally, I regarded the union between
India and Great Britain as the one great defence
against a war of the white and coloured races, I kept
tip a definite opposition to the Non-Co-operation
movement.

The part of the old Home Rule League, which
rejected me as President in 1 9 1 9 in favour of Mr. Gandhi,
had accepted a new Constitution from Mr. Gandhi,
and became the Swaraj League, a part of the
Non-Co-operation movement. The Swarajists boy-
cotted the Legislatures. H.R.H. the Duke of Con-
naught came to India to open the three Presidency
and the Central Legislatures. Both he and the Viceroy
declared that autocracy was abandoned, and the
King's message proclaimed " the beginning of Swaraj
within my Empire." Both King and Duke expressed
" their sorrow for the Panjab tragedy and their sym-
pathy with the sufferers. The Duke's words were
broken by strong emotion, moved the whole great
Assembly and have rung round India."

The Central Legislature opened well by the Govern-
ment giving way to the Hon. Mr. V. S. SrinivSsa Sastri,
who " moved a resolution accepted by the Govern-
ment, to examine the Repressive Laws on the Statute
Book and report on their repeal or amendment. (The

214 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

' Repressive Laws ' are those which substitute Executive
for Judicial action, and since 1804 have been used
arbitrarily to repress political efforts for Reform, placing
liberty and property at the mercy of the Executive.)
In the Assembly, following up this resolution,
Mr. O'Donnell moved and carried a resolution for a
committee to examine and report on the Press Laws."
Under these fell fourteen Acts dealing with Repression,
and three under Press Laws. In the first set twelve
and a half Acts were repealed at once, the remaining
one and a half to be repealed when the country was
less disturbed. In the second, only an amended Regis-
tration Act was left.

The first working day in the Assembly was given

"to a resolution moved by Mr. Jamnadas Dwar-
kadas and accepted by the Government, that ex-
pressed regret for the unnecessary humiliations and
hardships inflicted on Indians in the Panjab tragedy,
asserted the equality of Indians and Europeans in
the sanctity of life and honour, stated some of the
punishments inflicted on guilty officers, and promised
liberal compensation to families which had suffered
in the Jailianwalla Bagh massacre, on a scale similar
to that awarded to the British victims. General
Dyer had been removed from the Indian Army . . ,
1,700 condemned prisoners were released out of
1 ,786 ; a political reformer who had been condemned
to an extravagant sentence of transportation and
confiscation is now (1922) an honoured Minister in
the Panjab ; the administration of Martial Law was
reformed so that no such excesses could happen.

HOME RULE FOR INDIA 215

again, as was proved during the Malabar Rebellion
in 1921, 1922."

Other signs of the changed spirit, that it would take
too long to recount, were also shown in the various
Legislatures, and much useful work was done. I wrote
in 1922 on these things, and concluded the recital by
paying tribute to those English rulers who had worked
for us so well :

" It only needs a little patience and courage on
the part of India to win Home Rule through the
Reform Act, and Mr. Montagu, as Secretary of State,
will remain glorious in Indian History, as the man
who opened the gate of the road leading to Home
Rule, and stood firmly by India as she began to
tread it. Nor should the Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford,
be forgotten, who worked with Mr. Montagu through
the initial stages, and had the courage to declare
at the opening of the Indian Legislature that
' autocracy was abandoned,' laying down, by his own
work and will, the mighty power he had wielded
over more than three hundred millions of human
beings. Few are the autocrats, who like Lord
Chelmsford and Mr. Montagu, being offered a great
opportunity, have risen to the height of renunciation
to which they attained, and, without the compulsion
of Revolution, laid at the feet of a great subject
Nation the splendid gift of Freedom to tread the
path which led to Home Rule, working out her own
salvation. The nobility of their action is not yet
appreciated, for we are still struggling to reach our
goal, and do but poor justice to those who have
brought us within reach of it ; we wanted more than
they were able to obtain for us, facing the tremen-
dous forces of race pride, consciousness of armed

216 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

strength, contempt of oriental peoples, and the
strong ground of possession unchallenged effectively
for one hundred and sixty years, and all the wealth
obtained by India's subjection. Against all these
they struggled gallantly, and when India rules her-
self, she will do them justice and gratefully acknow-
ledge the debt she owes them. History will write
their names in golden letters, who found a Nation
enslaved and set it free to win, by its own strength,
its place among the Self-Governing Nations of the
world. Never before has so great a Revolution
been accomplished without bloodshed ; never before
has the autocrat voluntarily resigned power into the
hands of subjects, re-created into citizens."

These hopes were frustrated for the time by the
success of the Non-Co-operation movement, which
not only ruined thousands of school and college
students by calling them away from education and
then leaving them stranded, but also swept the
country under a new tyranny, that of the Swar&j
Party, which hooted ?ff the platform those of us who
opposed Mr. Gandhi and blocked for the time ail
political action save obstruction. As I said during that
unhappy period :

" Under the Gandhi Raj there is no Free Speech,
no open meeting except for Non-Co-operators.
Social and religious boycott, threats of personal
violence, spitting, insults in the streets, are the
methods of oppression. Mob support is obtained
by wild promises, such as the immediate coming of
Swaraj, when there will be no rents, no taxes, by
giving to Mr. Gandhi high religious names, such as

HOME RULE FOR INDIA 217

Mah&tma and Avatara, assigning to him supernatural
powers and the like."

Mr. Gandhi never approved of violence, but he
could not control his followers, and the result has been
a great set-back of Political Reform. Mr. Gandhi's
book, Indian Home Rule, is full of the wildest state-
ments. At last he called for millions of volunteers and
bade people pay no taxes, whereon the Government
arrested him, very courteously, and sent him to prison.
He said, very truly, that he could not control the
forces he had raised. His real followers are non-
violent and harmless, for they are now told not to
break laws but only to spin and weave.

The National Congress of 1920 at Delhi had carried
a resolution (1) demanding that the principle of Self-
Determination should be applied to India ; (2) asking
for the removal of all hindrances to free discussion ;
(3) demanding an Act of Parliament establishing
complete responsible Government in India, and (4)
that in the reconstruction of Imperial policy India
should be placed on an equality with the Self-
Governing Dominions. The second point has been
almost carried out ; the third and fourth have not.
But the Commonwealth of India Bill, as may be seen
by referring to the Appendix, will carry them out
when it becomes an Act. It has been delayed by the
breaking up of political parties caused by the Non-
Co-operation movement, now dead.

218 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

Shall India become an isolated country or be a
Free Nation in a Commonwealth of Free Nations
linked together by the British Crown ? My own hope
is to see an Indo-British Commonwealth of Coloured
and White Nations, as otherwise the " clash of colour "
may cause a fearful war, in which the present civiliza-
tion will go down as other civilizations before it have
gone down. Consider the position as to the owner-
ship of land and the growth of population, as it arises
between the Coloured and the White Races ; here are
some startling figures :

The population of the world is put at 1 ,800,000,000.
Japan and China contain about 500,000,000 ; India
and Burma 320,000,000. The rest of Asia southeast
of Burma has populations which bring up the total
of Asia to nearly 1,000,000,000. And they are all
awake, the students in the colleges are full of great
ideals, and books are circulating with enormous
rapidity, stirring these students to new ambitions.

On the other side of the Pacific and to the South
are huge countries sparsely inhabited ; Canada, with
an area equal to Europe, has a population of
8,000,000. The United States has 3,000,000 square
miles of territory and a population of 105,000,000.
Australia has a territory the same as that of the
United States and a population of 5,500,000. New
Zealand, about the size as the British isles, has a
population of something over 1,000,000. China has
territory half as spacious as that of the United

HOME RULE FOR INDIA 219

States, and over 400,000,000 inhabitants. Let anyone
visualise these facts, and ask himself what must be the
inevitable issue. The author of the vividly written The
Clash of Colour, from which these figures are taken,
sees " a broad fluttering tide of human beings in Asia
pressed by the urgent drive of their own incredible
multitude eastward and southward towards the other
shores of the Pacific the relatively sparsely populated
lands of America and the open spaces of Australasia."
This is not a movement of war but of economic
compulsion, an inevitable irresistible movement of the
hungry towards the empty fertile lands where Nature
will reward labour with food. If resisted by legislation,
it will burst into war, war implacable and sustained.
Once the struggle blazes into war, numbers must tell.
"In the clash of arms, laws are silent." And such a
war will not end before the present civilization has
received its death-blow.

But if India and Britain come to terms, if India be-
comes an equal partner in the firm instead of a ser-
vant, than all will be changed. As Mr. Rushbrook
Williams says, in one of his masterly reports, India in
1922-23:

" The impending struggle between East and West,
foretold by many persons who cannot be classed
either as visionaries or as fanatics, may easily be
mitigated or even entirely averted, if the British
Commonwealth of Nations can find a place within
its wide compass for three hundred and twenty

220 INDIA : BOND OR FREE ?

millions of Asiatics, fully enjoying the privileges, and
adequately discharging the responsibilities, which at
present characterise the inhabitants of Great Britain
and the Self -Governing Dominions."

If India be fully admitted into the Commonwealth of
Nations, if she possesses Dominion Status at Home as
well as abroad, then may a World Peace brood over
our seething Nations. In 1919 I urged that India should
determine for herself her own form of Self-Govern-
ment, and reference to the Appendix will show how
that idea has been carried out in the Commonwealth
of India Bill, now before the House of Commons.

The Future of India will, I hope, be united with that
of Britain for the sake of both Nations and for the
sake of Humanity at large, for they supply each other's
-defects, and united can do for the world a service that
neither can do alone. India in the Past has shown that
the highest spirituality does not prevent, but ensures,
the greatness of achievement in the many-aspected
splendour of a Nation's life ; under the shelter of her
sublime religion she developed a literature of unparal-
leled intellectual power, philosophical and metaphysical ;
.her Art flowered into exquisite beauty ; her dramas
still purify and inspire. Her physical prosperity endured
.millennium after millennium, and her wealth was the envy
of the world. Let her have Freedom to develop on
her own lines and she will again rival her ancient glory,
-and even excel it in the future. Robbed of Liberty,

HOME RULE FOR INDIA 22T

she is treading the path of death, and will soon leave
the world only the memory of what she was. Critical
are the coming years, wherein the decision must be
made. Let India remember what she was and realise
what she may be. Then shall her Sun rise once more
in the East and fill the western lands with Light.

Her salvation lies in Swaraj, Self-Rule, Home Rule,
and in that alone. Nothing else can preserve and
renew her vitality slowly ebbing away before our
eyes. Yet that vitality has endured from a Past for
which archaeological research has not as yet discovered
a boundary, beyond which the Mother-Race of the
present civilized Nations of the world did not raise her
stately head, wearing the aureole of spiritual glory,
holding her sceptre of intellectual and moral achieve-
ment over the countless millions of her children,
spreading westwards ever till their setting Sun be-
comes the Rising Sun on their ancient ancestral
Homeland.

PEACE TO ALL BEINGS

APPENDIX

THE COMMONWEALTH OF INDIA BILL

THIS Bill was not a sudden move, but was led up to by
progressive steps.

In September, 1913, a small band of my immediate
Theosophical workers formed themselves into a group
called " The Brothers of Service " to prepare for
steady advance not only along the lines named above
of Religious, Educational and Social Reform, but also
along Political, since the intolerable pressure of
tyrannical legislation hampered ail forward action.
They drew up the following leaflet which was widely
circulated :

" ' Theosophy must be made practical ' was a
sentence written and published long ago by one of
Those whom Theosophists regard as Masters. Since
Mrs. Annie Besant came to India in 1893, she has
been seeking for ways of service to India, so that
the country of her adoption might rise in the scale
of Nations, and take the world-position to which
her past entitles her and which her future will justify.
Rightly or wrongly, she judged that the great For-
ward Movement must begin with a revival of
spirituality, for National self-respect could only be
aroused and the headlong rush towards imitation of
15

226 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

western methods could only be checked, by sub-
stituting spirituality and idealism for materialism.
Great success attended the work, and she then
added to it educational activities, so as to appeal to
the citizens of the future and shape their aspirations
towards Nationhood, as an integral part of the
coming World-Empire. Cautiously she carried on
some Social Reform activities, organizing propaganda
against child-marriage, and in favour of foreign
travel, helping the latter by the establishment of an
Indian Hostel in London, 1 and of a Committee of
friendly Theosophists who would welcome youths
arriving in England as strangers. For many years
many of her more attached followers have been
pledged to delay the marrying of their children for
some years beyond the custom of their caste and
neighbourhood. In Politics, she has urged the larger
ideals, and has, especially in England, spoken for
the just claims of India.

" Believing that the best interests of India lie in
her rising into ordered freedom under the British
Crown, in the casting away of every custom which
prevents union among all who dwell within her
borders, and in the restoration to Hinduism of social
flexibility and brotherly feeling,

I PROMISE:

"1. To disregard all restrictions based on Caste.

" 2. Not to marry my sons while they are still
minors, nor my daughters till they have entered

1 This is an error ; we only kept a register of lodging-houses
with trustworthy landladies, and of private families where !ndiar>
lads would be taken as paying guests. *

APPENDIX 227

their seventeenth year. (' Marry ' includes any
ceremony which widows one party on the death
of the other.)

" 3. To educate my wife and daughters and
the other women of my family, so far as they will
permit- to promote girls' education, and to dis-
countenance the seclusion of women.

"4. To promote the education of the masses
as far as lies in my power.

"5. To ignore all colour distinctions in social and
political life, and to do what I can to promote the
free entry of coloured races into all countries on the
same footing as white immigrants.

" 6. To oppose actively any social ostracism of
widows who remarry.

" 7. To promote union among the workers in
the fields of spiritual, educational, social and political
progress, under the headship and direction of the
Indian National Congress."

It was further pointed out that while The Theo-
sophical Society could not, as a whole, be committed
to special lines of activities, it should work in India as
it was doing in England, " ventilating plans for pro-
found social re-organization with love instead of hatred
as an inspiration. She (Mrs. Besant) aims at the ever-
closer union of the British and Indian races by mutual
understanding and mutual respect." A further publi-
cation urged "the changes necessary to enable her
(India) to take her equal place among the Self -Govern-
ing Nations which owe allegiance to the British crown."

228 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

Religious Hindus were warmly invited to join in the
work, " in order that they may preserve to India the
ancient and priceless religion of Hinduism, now
threatened with decay by its practical separation from
the movement of Progress in India." It was stated
that Hinduism should shelter all progressive move-
ments, and not stand apart in selfish isolation. " Let
her cling only to the essentials the Immanence of
God and the Solidarity of Man. All gracious customs
and elevating traditions may be followed by her
children, but not imposed on the unwilling, nor used
as barriers to prevent social union. So shall she
become a unifier instead of a divider, and again assert
her glory as the most liberal of religions, the model of
an active spirituality, which inspires intellectual vigour,
moral purity and national prosperity."

This was followed by a course of lectures delivered
by me in Madras, in October and November, 1913,
the subjects of which show how definitely the Reform
Movement was guided, and the chairmen the type of
men who supported it.

Foreign Travel : Chairman, Dr. S. Subramania Iyer,
late Acting Chief Justice of the Madras High Court.

Child-Marriage and Its Results : Chairman, the
Hon. Dewan Bahadur T. S. Sadasiva Iyer, M.L,
Acting Judge of the Madras High Court.

Our Duty to the Depressed Classes : Chairman,
the Hon. Justice B. Tyabji.

APPENDIX 229

Indian Industries as Related Jto Self-Government :
Chairman, Dewan Bahadur M. Adinarayana lyah.

Appendix to the above lecture.

1 . Exports.

2. Weaving.

3. Political Effects.

4. Moral Effects.

Mass Education : Chairman, the Hon. Justice Miller.

The Education of Indian Girls : Chairman, the
Hon. Mr. P. S. Sivaswami Aiyer, C.I.E., C.S.I., Indian
Member of the Executive Council, Madras.

The Colour Bar in England, the Colonies and India :
Chairman, the Hon. Mr. Kesava Pillai.

The Passing of the Caste System : Chairman,
Dewan Bahadur L. A. Govindaraghava Iyer.

It will be noticed that the first three Chairmen were
Judges of the High Court, two (Theosophist) Hindus
and one Musalman, while an English Judge was the
Chairman of the fifth lecture. The eighth was also a
Theosophist. All the lectures dealt with burning social
questions, and were intended to lead up to a Political
Movement. ,

With the object of training ourselves in Parliament-
ary methods, on January 1, 1915, it was proposed to
form a " Madras Parliament," a Debating Society with
Parliamentary forms. We passed a Panchayat Act,
presented by Mr. T. Rangachari, now a member of the
Legislative Assembly and its late Deputy President ;

230 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

an Education Act, presented by Mr. C. P. Ramaswami
Aiyar, now Law Member, Vice- President of the Madras
Executive Council, K.C.I.E. ; and a Commonwealth of
India Act presented by myself, the parent of the Bill
now before the House of Commons. We flooded
the country with pamphlets, bearing the stirring
motto :

" We bring the Light that saves :
We bring the Morning Star :
Freedom's good things we bring you,
Whence all good things are."

Another series, New India Political Pamphlets, had
the motto :

" How long ere thou take station ?
How long ere thralls live free ? "

How India Wrought for Freedom, the story of the
Congress from 1885 to 1914, was published week
by week in the Commonweal, and was published
as a book with a Historical Preface, arousing great
wrath in the I.C.S. and the Anglo-Indian press,
being a narrative of facts, then known to few,
but now used by writers on India, and familiar all
over the country. In New India we wrote on
grievances, demanded Home Rule, hammered away
day in and day out. " Home Rule " was woven
into scarves, borders of saris, handkerchiefs. Its
red and green colours appeared everywhere. Then
we decided to have a Home Rule League, and

APPENDIX 231

Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji approved, but the local leaders
were more cautious, fearing it might weaken the Con-
gress, whereas we wanted to carry on a continuous
agitation to support Congress in the equality it had
claimed in the Congress of 1914. The effect of the
agitation, aided by the before quoted words of
Asquith, and the daily news from fields of battle,
swept over the land, carrying all before it. Here
are two extracts, a prose one and a song of my own
writing, which show the feeling of those thrilling days :

" While this many-featured and powerful edu-
cational agitation a thoroughly healthy and con-
stitutional one, never once disfigured by violence
was going on all over the country, the circum-
stances of the time were such as to force the
Nation rapidly forward into a consciousness of
Nationhood, and of her then place in the eyes of
the world, a place so unworthy of her storied past,
and of the virility of her people in the present, when
stirred by a call that moved them to exertion. That
call came from the War, which became more and
more terrible as it swept over the lands, and India
became full of pride in the prowess of her soldiers,
fighting side by side with the flower of European
troops, and fighting against the mightiest army in
the world. India felt herself living as her children
died for Freedom, and the villages which sent their
men became conscious of a wider and more stirring
world. The words of English statesmen, spoken to
enhearten their own countrymen, rang across the
seas to India. Asquith spoke of what England would
ieel if Germans filled her highest offices, controlled
her policy, levied her taxes, made her laws ; it

232 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

would be inconceivable, he cried, and intolerable.
India listened, and murmured to herself : ' But that
is exactly my condition ; here, these same English-
men think it the only conceivable and the only
tolerable life for me.' He spoke of the ' intolerable
degradation of a foreign yoke ' ; India whispered ;
' Is it so ? Do Englishmen think thus ? What, then,
of me ? ' She had accepted English rule by habit ;
now she was shocked into realizing the position
which she filled in the eyes of the world. A subject
Nation. A subject race. Was that really how the
white Nations looked on her ? Was that why her
sons were treated as coolies in the outside world ?
Did a foreign yoke at home mean unspeakable
humiliations abroad ?

" Then the pride of the Aryan Motherland awoke.
Had she not a civilization dating back by millennia,
beside which these white races, sprung from her
womb, were but of yesterday ? Had she not been
rich, strong, and self-ruled, while these wandered
naked in their forests, and quarrelled with each
other ? Had she not lived as equal with the might-
iest Nations of a far-off past, when Babylon was
the wonder of the world, when the streets of Nine-
veh were crowded, when Egypt was the teacher of
wisdom, when Persia was a mighty Empire, when
Greek philosophy was an offshoot of her schools,
when Rome clad her haughtiest matrons in the
products of her looms? Had not many a Nation
invaded her, and had she not either driven them
back, or assimilated them, and re-created them into
Indians ? Had not the gold of the world flowed into
her coffers ? Yet now she was poor. Had not great
Empires, now dead, sent ambassadors to her Courts ?
But now she was ' a Dependency ' of a little far-off
Island in northern seas. She had been asleep. She

APPENDIX 233

had been dreaming. But now she awakened. She
opened her eyes, and looked around her. She saw
her peasants, starving at home, but holding their
own as soldiers abroad. The coolies, despised in
England's Colonies, were cheered as heroes by
Englishmen in the streets of their capital city. Yes,
Asquith was right : ' the intolerable degradation of
a foreign yoke.' If she was worthy to fight for
Freedom, she was worthy to enjoy it. If she stood
equal with Englishmen, Scotchmen, Colonials, in the
trenches, and her poured-out blood mingled with
theirs, indistinguishably soaking into French and
Flemish soil, then she should be equal with them in
her own ancient land. The souls of her dead in
France, in Belgium, in Gallipoli, in Palestine, in Syria,
in Mesopotamia, in East Africa, cried to her to claim
the Freedom for which their bodies lay scattered
far from home and kin. India sprang to her feet
a Nation.

" And then, because a white woman had been
crying in her sleeping ears these truths about her-
self for more than twenty years, and was crying
them aloud still in her ears awakened by the crash
of War, she turned to her for a while as her natural
leader, who had blown the conch for Liberty's battle
in India. And she sang ! "

Here is one of the songs :

"WAKE UP, INDIA

" Hark ! the tramp of marching numbers,
India, waking from her slumbers.

Calls us to the fray.
Not with weapons slaughter dealing,
Not with blood her triumph sealing,
But with peace-bells loudly pealing,

Dawns her Freedom's Day.

234 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

" Justice is her buckler stainless,
Argument her rapier painless,

Truth her pointed lance.
Hark ! her song to Heaven ringing,
Hatreds all behind her flinging,
Peace and joy to all she's bringing,

Love her shining glance.

41 Mother, Dear ! all victorious,
Thou hast seen a vision glorious,

Dreamt of Liberty.
Now the vision has its ending
In the truth, all dreams transcending, *

Hope and fact together blending,

Free ! from sea to sea.

" By thy plains and snow-clad mountains,
By thy streams and rushing fountains,

By Himalayan heights.
By the past of splendid story,
By the hopes of future glory,
By the strength of wisdom hoary,

Claim thy sacred Rights."

And she claimed them.

The Commonwealth of India Bill.

We all considered it vital that the Indian Con-
stitution should be framed by Indians, and in answer
to a question from Lord Selborne the Chairman of
the Joint Committee of the Houses of Lords and Com-
mons in 1919, addressed to myself as witness whether
India would ever be satisfied with a Constitution drawn
up by Englishmen, I replied in the negative, basing the

APPENDIX 235

reply on the great age of her civilization and the
difference of manners and customs.

The practical framing of a Constitution for India by
Indians took birth in February, 1922, in a discussion in
the Political Section of the 1921 Club, Madras, on
the method of winning Swaraj. Mr. V. S. Ramaswami-
Sastri, then Assistant Editor of New India, the brother
of the Rt. Hon. V. S. Srinivasa Sastri, P.C., suggested
that India should resort to a Convention for the fram-
ing of a Constitution. The idea was adopted and
discussed widely in the press. The Political Section
sent Dr. Annie Besant to Simla in September, where
the Indian Legislature was in session, to seek its views ;
informal meetings were held by members of each
House separately, and both approving the idea of
calling a Convention, a joint meeting was held which
elected an Executive Committee from among them-
selves to call a Conference of members of the Central
and Provincial Legislatures to arrange and call a Con-
vention. The Conference met in February, 1923, at
Delhi, during the session of the Indian Legislature, and
after some days' discussion, outlined the essentials of
a Constitution carrying out the resolution of the Con-
gress of 1918 to place India on an equality with the
Self-Governing Dominions of the British Empire. The
Conference Executive drew up a pledge for candidates
for the Legislatures at the forthcoming election in the
autumn, accepting the outline and binding them to

236 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

call the Convention. This was done, and a second
Conference met in February, 1924. This approved the
work of the year 1923, and called the Convention,
into which it then merged itself, to meet in April,
1924. It consisted of Members and ex-Members of
the Legislatures, Central and Provincial (231), the mem-
bers of the Council of the National Home Rule League
(19), the elected representatives of the Political Sections
of the 1921 Clubs in Madras, Bombay and Calicut (3), the
co-opted representatives of the Indian Women's As-
sociation (2), and the late Law Member of the Governor-
General's Council, 256 in all, and this Convention is
responsible for the Commonwealth of India Bill. Until
now, every member has been an elected representa-
tive, all but a handful belonging to the elected Mem-
bers of the Legislatures.

It divided itself into seven Committees to deal with
different Sections of a Constitution establishing Self-
Go vernment, and directed them to report in the autumn
of the same year. A draft was based on these reports,
and the Convention sat in Bombay in December and
considered and amended it. It printed the results
and circulated them to political parties inviting further
amendments, and submitted the draft also to a sub*
committee appointed by a Committee of all parties,
presided over by Mr. Gandhi in November, 1924.
This sub-committee made a number of amendments,
and these with all others were submitted to the

APPENDIX 237

Convention sitting in Cawnpur on April 11, 12 and 13,
1 925 ; it was finally submitted to a Drafting Committee
in Madras, consisting of the Hon. Mr. C. P. Ramaswami
Aiyar, Messrs. Shiva Rao, Sri Ram, Yadunandan Prasad
and Dr. Annie Besant, with power to correct any
oversights in language where necessary, to see the Bill
through the press, and publish it in the name of the
Convention.

In May, 1925, it was sent to England to Major
D. Graham Pole, the Hon. Secretary of the British
Committee on Indian Affairs. He laid it before leading
members of the Labour Party and it was backed by
them, read a first time in the House of Commons and
ordered to be printed. It then went before the
Executive Committee cf the Parliamentary Labour Party,
that examines every Bill before it is taken up by the
Labour Government or Opposition, as the case may be.
It was closely examined, clause by clause, and finally
passed unanimously as embodying the resolutions
passed by the Labour Party from time to time respect-
ing India. It thus passed into the hands of the future
Labour Government, and was put on the list cf Bills
balloted for as an official measure.

SUMMARY OF BILL

GENERAL PRINCIPLES

INDIA will be placed on an equal footing with the
Self-Governing Dominions, sharing their responsibilities
and their privileges.

The right of Self-Government will be exercised from
the Village upwards in each successive autonomous
area of wider extent, namely, the Taluka ; the District ;
the Province ; and India (excluding the Indian States).

The three great spheres of activity, Legislative,
Executive and Judicial, will, as far as possible, be inde-
pendent of each other, while correlated in their
working.

DECLARATION OF RIGHTS

The following Fundamental Rights will be guaranteed
to every person : (a) Inviolability of the liberty of the
person and of his dwelling and property, save by
process of law in a duly constituted Court of Law.
(b) Freedom of conscience and the free practice of
religion, subject to public order or morality, (c) Free
expression of opinion and the right of assembly peace-
ably and without arms, and of forming Associations or

APPENDIX 239

Unions, subject to public order or morality, (d) Free
Elementary Education as soon as practicable, (e) The
use of roads, places dedicated to the public, Courts of
Justice and the like, (f) Equality before the law,
irrespective of considerations of Nationality, and (g)
Equality of sexes.

LEGISLATIVE

Legislative power is vested in the King, a Legislative
Assembly and a Senate. " Parliament " shall mean
only the Parliament of the Commonwealth of India.
The Legislative Assembly will consist of 300 Members,
and the Senate of 150.

The Senate will have equal powers with the Legisla-
tive Assembly except in regard to Money Bills, which
will originate only in the latter. The life of the Legisla-
tive Assembly will ordinarily be for five years, that
of the Senate for six years. The Senate will have a
continuous existence, with half the number of
Members retiring every three years by a process of
rotation.

In the Provincial Legislative Councils, the number of
Members will vary from 1 00 to 200 according to the
size and importance of the Province. The life of a
Legislative Council will ordinarily be for four years.
There will be at present only one Chamber in a
Provincial Legislature, but provision has been made in

240 INDIA. BOND OR FREE?

the Bill for the addition of a Second Chamber in a
Province, if it so decides.

In the District, Taluka, and Village Councils, which
are termed the Sub-Provincial Units of Government,
the number of members will vary according to local
conditions. The ordinary life-term of the District
Councils will be for three years, that of the Taluka for
two years, and that of the Village Councils for one
year.

FRANCHISES

The franchises for the various Legislative bodies
have been graded, commencing with universal adult
suffrage in the Village, and restricted by higher
educative, or administrative, or property or other
monetary qualifications in the case of each higher
body.

The principle of direct election has been maintained
throughout, except in the case of the Senate, where
candidates will be nominated to a panel from which
the electorate will make its choice. A distinction has
also been observed between Members and Electors,
the qualifications for the former being kept at a some-
what higher level than for the latter.

The powers of the various Legislative bodies have
been embodied in a Schedule to the Constitution ; and
.residuary powers have been vested in the Parliament.

APPENDIX 24 f

DEFENCE

There will be a Defence Commission with a majority
of Indians thereon, every five years, appointed by the
Viceroy in consultation with his Cabinet. The Com-
mission will recommend a minimum of non-votable
expenditure for the Defence Forces and also report on
the progress of the Indianization of those Forces. In
the event of disagreement, the Viceroy will have power
to secure the minimum which, in his opinion, is
necessary for the Defence Forces. No revenue of India
may be spent on any branch of Defence Forces in
which Indians are ineligible for holding commissioned
rank. As soon as the Commission recommends
favourably, Parliament may pass an Act to undertake
the full responsibility of Defence.

EXECUTIVE

There will be a Cabinet in the Government of India
consisting of the Prime Minister and not less than seven
Ministers of State, who will be collectively responsible
for the administration of the Commonwealth. The
Prime Minister will be appointed by the Viceroy, and
the other Ministers on the nomination of the Prime
Minister. The Viceroy will be temporarily in charge of
the Defence Forces. In ail matters except Defence,
the Viceroy will act only upon the advice of the
16

242 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

Cabinet. The salaries of the Viceroy and of the Mem-
bers of the Cabinet will be fixed by Parliament, but in
the case of the former, no alteration will come into
force during his continuance in office. The Cabinet
will resign as soon as it has lost the support of a
majority in the Legislative Assembly.

In the Provinces, the same principles will apply as in
the Central Government, except that the minimum
.number of Ministers will be three.

THE SECRETARY OF STATE

The powers and functions of the Secretary of State
and the Secretary of State in Council over the revenues
and the administration of India will be transferred to the
Commonwealth Executive.

JUDICIAL

There will be a Supreme Court of India, consisting
of a Chief Justice and not less than two other Judges
with original as well as appellate jurisdiction to deal
with such matters as may be determined by statute.
It will have power to deal with all matters arising out of
the interpretation of the Constitution or of laws made
by the Parliament. It will also be the final appellate
.authority in India, unless it certifies that the question is
one which should be determined by the Privy Council.

APPENDIX 243

The existing High Courts will have the same powers
and authority as before the establishment of the
Commonwealth.

FINANCE

The revenues of Parliament will form a consolidated
revenue fund, and will be vested in the Viceroy. No
revenue may be raised by the Executive without the
sanction of Parliament.

The allocation of revenues between Parliament and
the Provinces will be decided by a Finance Commission
every five years.

NEW PROVINCES

Parliament will have the power to alter the limits of
existing Provinces or establish new Provinces and make
laws for their administration.

MINORITIES

Communal Representation as now existing will be
abolished, and all elections will be held on the basis of
purely territorial electorates. As a temporary measure,
the number of seats now reserved for Musalmns and
Europeans will be guaranteed for five years, at the end
of which period the question of its continuance,
modification or abolition will be examined by a
Franchise Commission.

244 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

Bills affecting the religion or the religious rites or
usages of a community or communities will be referred
to a Standing Committee of the Legislature in which
they are introduced ; and if the Committee, on which
there will be a majority of the members of the com-
munity or communities concerned, reports adversely,
such Bills will lapse for the period of one year.

PUBLIC SERVICES

There will be a Public Services Commission to
exercise full control over the public services of India as
regards recruitment, discipline, promotion and pensions.
Officers now in the service of the Government of India
or of the Provincial Governments will be guaranteed their
-existing rights, but, at the establishment of the
Commonwealth, they will pass into the service of the
Commonwealth or the Provinces, as the case may be.

ALTERATION OF THE CONSTITUTION
Parliament will have power to alter the Constitution.
THE SCHEDULES

The First Schedule gives the oath of allegiance and
affirmation to His Majesty King George V and his heirs
and successors.

APPENDIX 245

The Second Schedule :

(1) Electors must be at least 21 years of age.

(2) Qualifications for the graded electorates are
given, beginning with the Village, where universal suf-
frage is provided for. The qualifications of the remaining
electorates relate to (a) administrative experience, (f>)
education literary or technical, (c) economic and in-
dustrial ministration (co-operative stores and banks,
wells, tanks and canals, cottage industries, forest, local
taxation, works of public utility), (cf) income, (e) pos-
session of land property, (f) occupation of a house ;
thus including different classes of citizens. These
qualifications are graded, being very low for the Taluka
(collection of villages), and highest for the Senate.
Only one of the various qualifications is required to
qualify a man or woman as a voter in any council.

The Third Schedule :

The powers of each Council, from the Village Pan-
chayat to the Parliament, are fully stated.
The Fourth Schedule :

(1) There will be no communal electorates, but as
a transitory provision, the same number of seats will be
reserved for Musalmans as is provided for in the
Government of India Act, 1918, for five years, when
a Franchise Commission will report on its continuance,
amendment or abolition.

(2) Proposed legislation affecting religions shall be
postponed for one year if a Committee of the House

246 INDIA: BOND OR FREE?

in which the legislation is introduced, and consisting of
a majority of members of the religion or religions
affected, decide against the measure.

(3) The number of members assigned to the Prov-
inces for the various legislative bodies are given.

(4) The salaries of the Viceroy, Governors and the
Commonwealth and Provincial Ministers are given.